Ocula Magazine

(excerpt)

Maryam Hoseini at Green Art Gallery

There is a lot going on in Maryam Hoseini's bodily dramas, defined by figures painted like flat puppets inside abstract architectures accented by fine pencil work, even if it is never made clear what exactly is happening.

There are clues, of course; as is the case with the wine glasses that litter the rooms in two paintings from 2022, on view at Art Dubai: Anxiously One on One and The Window.

In the former, a trio of bodies triangulate in a room where gradated colours of mauve and midnight are punctuated by green reed-like wisps on floor panels, and white lines feathering out from vertical crevices on the wall.

A figure stands over two kneeling women, its ankle tied to the scene's projection on the wall with black thread where its head is cut off by a window looking out to a starry night. A second thread connects one kneeling figure to its smaller avatar in the foreground, as if to visualise the dissociation that comes with inebriation.