Rojina Farrokhnejad: Gods and Monsters

Press release by SUM Gallery, Canada

Press photo

Rojina Farrokhnejad: Gods and Monsters
OCT 14 – DEC 1 | 2023
SUM Gallery, Suite 425 – 268 Keefer Street, Vancouver, Canada

Mythology offers us valuable life lessons by illuminating our own human behaviour. In Vancouver-based artist Rojina Farrokhnejad’s solo exhibition entitled Gods and Monsters, Farrokhnejad uses mythological figures like Gods, centaurs, mediators, angels, and demons to explore transcendent and timeless human conditions, familial relationships and emotions, like love and lust, envy and rage, rejection and loss, violence and death.

Myth demands to be transplanted into the present, reinterpreted according to present-day ideas or anxieties. Myths should be thought of as constantly-moving turnstiles. To retell is to metamorphose. Meaning is never fixed, but ever fluid — as likely to be arrested as the reflection in water that entranced Narcissus.

A painter, sculptor, and filmmaker, Farrokhnejad’s multidisciplinary exhibit uses figurative art to explore themes of queer sensuality, religiosity, and isolation. Gods and Monsters employs elements of animation, acrylic and oil paintings, and clay and ceramic sculpture to blur the line between the representational and abstract; the grotesque and divine; mythological symbolism and religious devotion. In Gods and Monsters, Farrokhnejad takes on the role of mediator to initiate a non-verbal dialogue where audiences are able to interrogate their own stance: Are we all simply Gods and Monsters, one or the other, or neither?

About Rojina Farrokhnejad

Rojina Farrokhnejad (RJ) lives in Vancouver, BC. Originally from Iran, she came to the city in the early 2000s and quickly connected with the LGBT community and found like-minded people, now proudly calling Vancouver home. RJ is renowned for her evocative images of memories & metamorphosis, expressions of solitude, and moments of importance that connect with the audience’s experiences. She uses myth to explore the darker side of human nature and as allegory to encrypt hidden meanings. A painter, sculptor and filmmaker, she works using multiple mediums and techniques like oil, acrylic and clay in layers through a variety of motion, colours, tones and textures, to help provide a sense of narrative. Her most recent works push the boundaries of representation, integrating abstraction within imaginative figurative compositions. Her works have been exhibited at grunt gallery, Gallery Gachet, and the Cultch.