Maryam Takalou

Beyond the Nets

Mary Takalou (Tehran, 1984) has been honing her skills in painting and printmaking for the past several years. Originally a figurative painter, she now incorporates them into three-dimensional pieces, installations, and videos. Her newest body of her work deals with identity, placement/displacement, and the female body, concerns stemming from her experiences as a woman living in Iran and as an immigrant to the United States.

“Early on, I became interested in space and how much of it I took up. I measured my body, I mapped my studio, the first space that belonged to me in this country. As I continued to think about my place in the world, I remembered how in Iran, I often saw men throw the pigeons they kept on the roofs of their homes into the air, then sit and watch them fly. I began to think of the birds as a symbol of femininity as both pigeons and women in the Middle East are kept as entertaining objects for men. I incorporated their image into my work as I considered boundaries and their transgression; pigeons can fly where they will, across borders, but “belong” to someone. Also, pigeons represent the possibility of return: because they can navigate by the Earth’s magnetic field, they can always go home.

I have continued to explore entrapment and restriction, both mental and physical, in my recent works, such as Beyond the Nets, what I call a self-limited body, a body burdened by the fear of self-expression or even independent existence.”