Parya Vatankhah : Fragments of Pain

Exhibition from December 6th, 2025 until January 4th, 2026 – Librairie du Jour

Opening with the artist on December 6th, 2025 ; 6-9 p.m.

In a desert landscape, the body of a wounded woman appears, covered in bandages. More than a figure of pain, she becomes a symbol of transition: that of visible and invisible borders, of territories crossed, left behind, lost. Her scarred body tells a story of exile, separation, loss.

In this arid, refuge-less space, she bears the marks of uprooting—the absence of a place to return to, the impossibility of blending back into her homeland. Through this fragile and silent presence, Parya Vatankhah evokes wandering, the border as a dividing line, and the violence of having to leave in order to survive.

About the artist :

Parya Vatankhah, a French-Iranian visual artist and researcher, lives and works in Paris.

With a PhD in Aesthetics, Arts Sciences and Technologies, her work explores the tensions between the intimate and the political, femininity and taboos, identity and exile, as well as the relationship between memory and forgetting.

Her theoretical and artistic research is deeply rooted in her personal history: a childhood and youth spent in Iran under an authoritarian theocratic regime, followed by the experience of exile and regained freedom in France.

The body, often her own, occupies a central place in her work: it becomes a visual and symbolic language through which she explores uprooting, suffering, and resilience. Through this approach, Parya Vatankhah questions anthropological and sociopolitical issues, particularly those related to injustices and forms of repression still at work in Iran.

Her practice is part of a process of continuous research and transformation, where each work builds on the previous one in a dynamic of sensory and conceptual exploration.

She moves freely between painting, photography, video, performance, and installation, with each medium responding to an inner need: painting arises from contemplation, while performance springs from the urgency of the gesture.

Her works have been exhibited in institutions such as the Grand Palais (Paris) and Malmö Art. The artist was also nominated for the AICA France Art Critics’ Award in 2023 and has received several awards, including the London Feminism Short Film Award.