121.9 x 152.4 cm
In Vide silencieux - Écho du Nord (Silent Void - Echo of the North), Maryam Izadifard transforms the interior space into a site of resistance and remembrance. Her paintings, created following a four-month residency in Finland supported by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, are imbued with the northern light and its long silences, while evoking exile, migration, and the enduring resonance of elsewhere.
This body of work is rooted in a study of Northern European art history, particularly that of Finland, and in the discovery of the exhibition Modern Gothic at the National Gallery of Finland. These references deeply informed the genesis of the series, where light, silence, and memory converge in a single breath.
In a world marked by the acceleration and transience of events, Izadifard turns her gaze toward history: toward the presence and place of women within it, and toward the influence of religion in redefining their roles. The women artists of the North, through introspection and a quest for emancipation, have opened fissures within established structures, redrawing the contours of another pictorial language-one that is sensitive, interior, and insurgent.
Izadifard's works draw upon the language of icons to question what is venerated and what is silenced. By integrating imagery reminiscent of Orthodox devotional art and subtle references to the oppression of women, she reclaims the domestic realm as a space of both confinement and resistance. In these pared, down interiors, an ironing board, a coat rack, a shelf, a sink-the symbols of care and labor intertwine with allusions to sacred iconography. These settings become intimate sanctuaries where the spiritual and the everyday meet, revealing the persistence of ritual within displacement.
Painted in subdued tones and diffused light, these spaces contain fragments of protection: concealed altars, modest relics, whispered prayers. Each canvas suggests a place of refuge, a site where memory gathers and protection is improvised. Objects become witnesses: an iron emits both heat and silence, a cord connects two worlds, a faucet mirrors a distant icon.
These metaphors extend the idea of rootedness beyond geography, into the persistence of gesture, the continuity of devotion, and the quiet transmission of culture across exile. Balancing absence and presence, Izadifard reveals how the displaced body finds grounding through small acts of faith and care.
Silent Void - Echo of the North invites the viewer into an introspective encounter where silence is not emptiness but resonance. This silence carries the weight of what has been endured and what continues to endure. Through a restrained yet deeply evocative visual language, Izadifard transforms solitude into testimony. Her work becomes a meditation on how, even in exile, roots adapt-finding new ground in memory, tenderness, and the unspoken strength of women's worlds.
