Artist Conversation #4

Artist: Mahsa Soroudi

Exhibition: Nature’s Cadence

Media: Succulents

Website: https://www.mahsasoroudi.com/

Instagram: Mahsasoroudi

Mahsa Soroudi is an Iranian artist born into an open-minded and artistic family in Tehran, Iran. She lived in Malaysia for over a year shortly after marrying for exposure and better opportunities. Soon she moved to the states and according to an interview hosted by Glenn Zucman vía YouTube, resides in Southern California where she has expressed she now feels at home and has adapted well to the environment here. Mahsa has a BFA in Visual Communication and attended Azad Art and Architecture University in Tehran in 2006. According to the interview, Mahsa expresses she felt very homesick and out of place in the U.S. and spent a lot of time alone in which she observed her succulents and plants. They revealed more about her life then she expected.

For this exhibition, I was only able to experience it through the interview and the succulents shown. Mahsa explained how they grow, the struggles her plants went through and how they survived. The succulents were all different and unique, of different shapes and sizes. Oneparticular “leaf” that was used as a seed, had a lot more succulent developing then the others and sprouted with purple undertones that seemed more lively then the rest. In the bigger plants shown, one particular stem was facing down and had a brown hue that resembled rotting or damage. The stems didn’t follow perfect lines, rather almost shape shifting tendencies.

This exhibit was about Mahsa’s journey to feeling like she belonged, or whole again. She stated that she believed at one point in her life, that Iran would be the only place she felt at home and struggled a lot to adapt in the U.S. As she watched her succulents also decay with her, she suddenly decided to take care of them and save them. And her efforts were successful, the succulents survived the storm and this convinced her she could too. She observed their roots as inspiration to develop her own. Her interpretations of the plants were very personal and meant so much more to her then most of us could imagine. As an immigrant in a foreign land, she could feel the setbacks and the lack of acceptance or connection to Western culture and other aspects. Mahsa is now thriving just like the succulent in the bigger plant that seemed to have gotten a taste of death, but nevertheless persevered for its journey was not over yet.

As I was listening to the interview between Glenn and Mahsa, I immediately connected what she was saying to the many instances of emptiness that I too have felt at one point in my life. It is something difficult to explain and even more difficult to find answers to. Each person experiences different variations of emptiness and listening to their experience and story is such a beautiful thing. It simply reminds me of how complex humans are and that we can often get caught up in our sentiments and thoughts and truly let them dominate us. The interpretation of her succulents, was totally relatable as she was inspired by their resilience to hardships. I think the motivation she saw in them was actually coming from something deeper in her mind, a hunger for better times, a desire to give life more meaning. What better place can you look for to study life than nature?