Exploring Identity Through Word and Image

Gita Meh 
Painthings It is at once tradi2on and blasphemy, honor and 
affront. The argument over the discourse of 
Islam conflates in Gita Meh’s pain2ngs: how to 
uCer and give substance to the word of God? 
How to celebrate it? How to make it real? 
Inscrip2on, belief, focus, passion – does that 
mean a fiery purity or a substan2ve sensuality, a 
faith based en2rely on the wriCen word or a 
carnal reality conjured from the mind? If the 
world is not possible without the word, isn’t the 
word then full of the world? Doesn’t it include 
delights and desires, or is the word the sword 
that mows down worldly distrac8ons and 
challenges? 
Selected work from the series of: 
Women of My Land 
My Body Hair  
My Body Text  
My Body Tiled 
My Body Tex2le 
© Gita Meh |  images and text curtsy of the ar2st

Inscribing The Body  
    
Gita Meh, as much writer as painter, as much abstrac2onist as representa2onalist, as much Iranian as anything else, worships the word – and its 
calligraphic traces – and worships the world it enmeshes, the deity it lauds, the sensa2ons, however contrary, it describes, points to, notates. In Persia, 
where long ago the river of Semi2c script began running over an Indo‐Aryan bedrock, the mee2ng of civiliza2ons, the fusion of ar2factures, opened up 
new possibili2es for the image in the verbal imagina2on. Gita Meh’s pain2ng, perhaps even more than her wri2ng per se, makes manifest – for our 2me – 
this concre2on of the abstract, this fleshing out of the concept. She writes her images.  
This is as true of those images free of wri2ng as it is of those images filled with wri2ng. Whether pain2ng rampant horses, burgeoning females, or intricate 
forms on 2ny 2les, Meh describes her subjects with a bright paleCe – or, conversely, stark black and white – and a sinuous line. She favors curvaceous, 
even extravagant contours, impelled at once by the voluptuousness of organic forms – beginning, or perhaps ending, with woman – and by the elaborate, 
uniquely graceful loops and tergiversa2ons of Arabic script. In her most convincing work it is hard to tell where Meh stops wri2ng and starts pain2ng – or 
perhaps there is no difference in her visual cosmology between making words and making images. Both approximate God’s reality, aUer all, in ways 
peculiar to humans.  
The confla2on of thing and name, body and verse, is a poe2c conceit that has well served countless ar2sts. For all their insouciance, Meh’s pain2ngs and 
drawings rely profoundly on this conceit. She writes her pictures; she paints her words. This confounds the tradi2onal prohibi2on of rendering graven 
images – not simply by rendering those images, but by rendering them as if they were parts of speech, vocaliza2ons, things and ideas at once. But in 
doing this Meh insists that any hand‐wriCen image is finally an abstrac2on, as much removed in its way from its subject as is the word that describes that 
subject. A pain2ng or drawing evokes the thing it depicts but, despite the Pygmalion legend and others, does not become it. The prohibi2on against 
graven images makes sure that humans do not mistake their own handiwork from God’s, and do not revere that which they fabricate. No, even in the 
most humanist apprehension of pain2ngs, of pictures, there is no mistaking the hand‐rendered image for the thing it depicts. What Meh argues implicitly 
is that that humanist apprehension is par2cularly far removed from that mistake, replaced with the understanding that the images before us are ciphers 
for the real thing – like leCers, like words.  
S2ll, the conjura2on of things through images or through words is a powerful act. The evoca2on of the idea of something is the provoca2on of the mind 
towards that something, towards its idea, towards its ideal. Meh proposes not to breathe life into her fabrica2ons, but to amplify the life in the real things 
she depicts. She calls up these things, the way that Lascaux cave painter called up a good hunt. The painter’s tribe did not eat the depic2ons on the wall, 
but the evoca2on of those animals spurred them on. Likewise (if with rather more circumspec2on – and more expansiveness), Meh spurs us on to a more 
vivid, deligh[ul grasp of the world, by speaking with pictures, by showing with words.  
  
Peter Frank 
New York 
November 2006

Gita Meh 
Born 1963, Tehran, Iran  
Lives and works in Dubai and Tehran 
  
Educa1on 
1997    MFA, California Ins8tute of The Arts, Crea2ve & Cri2cal Wri2ng/Integrated Media 
             program, Professor Jon Wagner, one year Study, pending, Valencia, CA  
1996  BFA, California Ins8tute of The Arts, Visual Arts, Valencia 
1992  P’ART, Pain2ng, Professor Bernd Mac, StuCgart, Germany 
1989  Freie Kunstschule, Graphic Design, Pain2ng, Zuffenhausen, Germany  
1983    Academia Delle Belle Ar8, Three months of drawing, Florence, Italy 
1981  New Andish Azadegan, School of Visual Arts, Tehran, Iran  
1976  Private Studies, Professor Petgar, Pain2ng, Tehran, Iran 
Selected Solo Exhibi1ons 
2009  Carbon12, Dubai, UAE | Silent Voices, pain8ngs 
2008   Tashkeel Gallery, Dubai, UAE | 27 Years of Migra8on, installa8on, photography 
  Hoor Gallery, Tehran | Migratory PaIerns, pain8ngs 
             Seyhoun Gallery, Los Angeles | Passage, pain8ngs 
2006    Athens Art Space, Athens, Greece | Metamorphosis, pain8ngs 
2003  Inmo Gallery, Los Angeles | Soffreh, food installa8on 
1999  House of Iranian Painters, Tehran | Say Ya Ali Then Exit On Exile, pain8ngs     
1991    The Hague Gallery, The Hague, Netherlands | Wounded Wishes & Wind, pain8ngs 
1990    Gallery Schilling, StuCgart, Germany | I Formed My Arch, pain8ngs 
  
Selected Group Exhibi1on 
2009  Sharjah Biennial 09 | Soffreh, installa8on   
2008  New York, N.Y., Ice Box Project Space | Conven2ons and Antudes | No Flag Just Love, photography 
  Slick Art Fair, Paris, France | Barbies Relocated from Iran, Photography 
  MOCA Tehran, Eighth Biennale | Women of My Lands, pain8ngs 
2007   MOCA, the Geffen Contemporary, Los Angeles | Work and Survival, Suzanne Lacy project ,audio installa8on 
2002  Japanese American Na2onal Museum, Los Angeles | Chadoor Study, performance  
2001    Bergamot Sta2on, Track 16, Santa Monica | Overflowing | Alef Ba Meaning Alphabet, Mul8media 
1991    MOCA Tehran, First Biennial | Simourgh, pain8ng

Grants & Scholarships 
2002‐06  WATT Industries | WATT Family, Los Angeles 
1997  Lulu May & Richard Von Hagen 
1996  California Ins2tute of the Arts 
1995    Na2onal Art Associa2on  
  Ahmanson Founda2on 
  California Ins2tute of the Arts 
1994  Na2onal Art Associa2on 
1993  California Ins2tute of the Arts 
1992  Irvine Founda2on 
1991  Cultural ACaché of Iran, Cologne, Germany 
Private Collec2on 
Farjam Founda2on, Dubai, UAE 
WaC Industries, Los Angeles, CA 
Farhad Bakh2ar, Dubai, UAE 
Future Projects 
2009    Na2onal Gallery of Prague, Czech Republic, permanent collec2on | Male | From Adam to Atom to Eve, video installa2on | Prague, CR 
2010    DIFC | Art Dubai | Collaborator Patrizio Travagli | Sweet City Meets the Speed of Light | Dubai, UAE 
2010  Cairo Biennial 2010 | Palace of the Arts/Opera House | Collaborator, Patrizio Travagli | Sweet City Meets the Speed of Light | Cairo, Egypt 
2010  Carbon12 | Silenced Faces, installa2on | Dubai, UAE 
Publica1ons 
2009  Art Oasis, Dubai, UAE |Exhibi2on catalogue | A Green Vision | To Think Locally is to Act Globally 
2008  Tashkeel Gallery, Dubai, UAE | Exhibi2on catalogue | 27 Years of Migra8on 
  Jam Jar Gallery, Exhibi2on Catalogue | Soﬀreh, Meaning Tablecloth 
2007  University of Arkansas Press | Sin, poems of Forugh Farokhzad | Cover art 
2007  Hour Gallery, Tehran, Iran | Exhibi2on Catalogue | Migratory PaIerns  
2006  Seyhoon Gallery, Los Angeles, CA | Exhibi2on catalogue | Passage 
2005  Persian Heritage, Passaic, NJ | Vol.10, No. 40 | At Time AIar, At Time at Far, poem  
2004  She@ Studio, Los Angeles | Exhibi2on catalogue | How a House Became a Home and Home a Temple  
2001  Track 16, Los Angeles | Exhibi2on Catalogue | Norman Klein, Emp2ness Digitalized |  AleZa Meaning Alphabet 
1982  Arts and Cultural Ministry, Tehran, Iran | Children’s book, Limited Edi2on | AleZa

Women of My Lands 
Is a series of female ﬁgures that depicts 
women who I have met and got to 
know through out my 27 years of 
migratory life, women who have 
nourished, provided, thought, 
validated, conﬁrmed and supported me, 
that which made my arrival to where I 
am today possible.   
  
Each pain2ng has a name of the person 
I got to know on my path.  Some 2tles 
are sentences that have been 
experienced and felt between us.  I 
have brushed their friendship.  I have 
colored their kindness and strength.  I 
have created them through my lines, 
colors, form brushing them as the 
content of my work.  I have studied 
their cultures and the way they love.  
They way and how they care.  Women 
who know the meaning and feeling of 
being a stranger and therefore the 
other. 
  
I loved searching their inner nature.  I 
cherish the instances, which pain 
became light and light became 
perceiving through them.  I loved the 
moments when sky and earth became 
birth through their breath of love. 
  
The crea2on of “Women of My Lands” 
is the result of my actual experiences.

Women & Structure Study | 1 of 13  
charcoal on printed paper 
11 x 8in. (27.94 x 20.32cm.) 
painted in Valencia CA | 1993

Banna, Meaning Structure 
series of: My Body Tiled   
acrylic | oil marker | gliCer | semi precious stones on canvas  
30 x 23in. (76.2 x 35.56 cm.)  
painted in Los Angeles CA | 2003

Women Of Architecture, Us | acrylic on canvas | 67 x 52in. (170.18 x 132.8cm.) | painted in Los Angeles CA | 2002

Hou, Hou, Ali, Hou 
meaning: Sound of Realiza2on, Ali, Sound of Realiza2on 
series of: My Body Hair, Removal & Regrowth  
acrylic | removed women bodily hair | wax stripes on canvas 
72 x 60in. (182.88 x 152.4 cm.)   
painted in Los Angeles CA |  2002

Besmellah 
series of: My Body Text 
oil on canvas 
39.37 x 39.37in (100 x 100cm.) 
painted in Tehran Iran | 2008

Open Source 
acrylic on canvas 
20 x 16in. (50.8 x 40.64cm.) 
Painted in Los Angeles CA | 2005

Chera Gham Cheragham 
meaning: Why Sadness My Light 
72.4 x 55.11in. (183 x 140cm.) 
painted in Dubai UAE | 2007

Ghonah 
meaning: Sin 
Book cover | Sin | Forugh Farrokhzad| Translated by Sholeh Wolpe | The University of Arkansas Press  
18 x 14in. (45.72 x 35.56cm.) 

Seeing The Being 
39.37 x 27.55in. (100 x 70cm.) 

Women & Structure Study | 3 of 13 
charcoal on printed paper 
11 x 8in. (27.94 x 20.32cm.) 
Painted in Valencia CA | 1993

Women of Architecture 
Acrylic | gliCer | wooden windows on canvas 
48.3 x 48.3in. (122 x 122cm.) 

He, Ta, Lah, Noghte, Noghte, Noghte 
meaning: T, Lah, Dot, Dot, Dot 
series of: My Body Hair, Removal & Regrowth  
removed woman bodily hair | wax strips | acrylic on canvas 
72 x 60in. (182.88 x 152.4 cm.) 

Women & Structure Study | 4 of 13 
Charcoal on printed paper 
11 x 8in. (27.94 x 20.32cm.) 
painted in Valencia CA | 1993

Standing on Thee Wings 
acrylic | oil marker on canvas 
15.74 x 11.81in. (40 x 30cm.) 

Run Run Through Certainty 
series of: My Body Tiled 
hand painted 2les | semi precious stones | s2ckers| oil marker on wood and canvas 
23 x 46in. (58.42 x 116.84cm.) 

Whom Hou 
meaning: Who is this sound of realiza2on 
72.4 x 55.11in. (183 x 140.cm.) 
painted in Dubai UAE | 2007

Gheble Am Ghalb 
Meaning: My Heart is My Gheble 
series of: My Body Text  
oil on canvas 
39.37 x 39.37in. (100 x 100cm.) 

Women of Open Trinity 
52 x 52in. (132.8 x 132.8cm.) 

One word 
We originated from one word. 
We search for this one word through this vast world with thousands of words. 
  
And God 
Used one word to give 2me life, 
As universe held Venus with one hand, 
And, 
With the other, 
Earth carved us into her inside. 
  
My mind and body awkwardly aware. 
Aware of all senses.  
Wounds. 
Words.  
And 
Worlds. 
  
Our history began 
When we were in search for reality towards the right light. 
That one right word.  
This one right thing.   
That right moonset. 
This right hold. 
  
Word is en2rely carved into each human heart   
As we feel you breathe truth through us. 
  
Gita Meh 
Los Angeles 
2005

Exploring Identity Through Word and Image

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Exploring Identity Through Word and Image