Media Archives — Mahdi Mahdian

1 - 24

Woman, life, freedom series
2023
Cyanotype on paper, manipulated
Each: 30 x 22 cm / 11.8″ x 8.6″

Photography-centered approaches and practices

About a year after the Iranian woman, life, freedom movement, the intense emotions and urgency that drove my work settled as the resistance settled. A key idea was that if I were working with politically charged photographs, I might engage in photography directly rather than reinterpret photos through painting and drawing. I revisited contemporary Iranian political and social imagery with fresh eyes, this time without the constraints of a predetermined medium. In parallel, I also examined and archived personal materials—family photographs, childhood images, and ID photos—seeking connections between personal and collective histories. In these series, I experimented with cyanotype, painting on photographs, collage, and photo-based art. A key strategy I adopted was reiteration—intentionally revisiting and reinterpreting themes, images, and symbols across multiple works.

2 - 24

Woman, life, freedom series
2023
Cyanotype on paper, manipulated
Each: 30 x 22 cm / 11.8″ x 8.6″

3 - 24

Fathers / Woman, life, freedom series
2023
Cyanotype on paper, manipulated
30 x 22 cm / 11.8″ x 8.6″

4 - 24

Father / Woman, life, freedom series
2023

Cyanotype on paper
30 x 22 cm / 11.8″ x 8.6″

5 - 24

Woman, life, freedom series
2023

Cyanotype on paper, manipulated
30 x 22 cm / 11.8″ x 8.6″

6 - 24

6 years old / Woman, life, freedom series
2023
Cyanotype on fabric
30 x 30 cm / 11.8″ x 11.8″

7 - 24

6 years old / Woman, life, freedom series (Diptych)
2023
Cyanotype on paper, manipulated
28 x 20 cm / 11″ x 7.8″

8 - 24

6 years old / Woman, life, freedom series
2023
Cyanotype on paper, manipulated
22 x 22 cm / 8.6″ x 8.6″

9 - 24

Untitled / Woman, life, freedom series
2023
Cyanotype on paper, manipulated, collage
Each: ≈ 30 x 22 cm / 11.8″ x 8.6″

10 - 24

Untitled / Woman, life, freedom series
2023
Cyanotype on paper, manipulated, collage
Above: 30 x 22 cm / 11.8″ x 8.6″

Below: 7 x 174 cm / 2.7″ x 69″

11 - 24

Story, memory, history
2024

Cyanotype on paper, triptych
Each: 30 x 22 cm / 11.8″ x 8.6″

12 - 24

Home, Conceived and Perceived: What to Keep, What to Leave
Window Gallery Installation by Mahdi Mahdian
Nuit Blanche Regina, Canada, 2025 | Neutral Ground Gallery

Artwork Description
This window installation reflects on displacement, memory, and the emotional fragments of home. At its centre, an empty white clothes rack stands as a symbol of absence. Behind it, three oil paintings lean quietly: a bundle of scattered clothes under a starry sky, two sealed boxes in a moonlit field, and a row of winter coats—each evoking what is left behind, what is stored, and what is missing.
Above and around the space, irregular threads hold small photographs clipped with clothespins. These images were sent to the artist by friends in Ukraine, documenting the scattered contents of his former home and studio. From Canada, Mahdian was asked to choose—what to keep, what to let go, what still mattered.
Drawn from personal experience of exile from Iran to Ukraine and then to Canada, the work becomes a quiet archive of survival, shaped by absence and the shifting boundaries of what we call “home.”