Forsaken with a Side of Pickles
Saba Farhoudnia, Without the Voice Box (detail), 2025. Acrylic and alcohol ink on canvas, 36 x 48 inches
Selected Works
Curator: Nina Chkareuli-Mdivani
(New York — September 4, 2025) Marking her second solo exhibition at Fou Gallery, New York–based Iranian artist Saba Farhoudnia presents Forsaken with a Side of Pickles, on view from September 18 through November 12. In this body of work, Farhoudnia continues to explore the complex relationship between human presence and natural forces as these opposing elements interact and unfold within urban and post-urban landscapes. The exhibition is curated by Nina Chkareuli-Mdivani.
Within this exhibition, Farhoudnia’s new paintings examine what endures when cultural landmarks are abandoned or overtaken by nature. On multilayered, sanded gesso canvases, she uses acrylic and alcoholic ink to mark points of no return, balancing weighty themes with humor and a light-hearted undertone. Her work suggests that traces of presence persist even when perspective is uncertain — after all, subtle reminders of life continue to appear across her imagined landscapes.
Some of the masterfully drawn architectural references on Farhoudnia’s canvases are inspired by real structures, such as the Azadi Tower in Tehran and an abandoned sanatorium in Tskaltubo, Georgia. She imagines these sites both abandoned and animated by fleeting human or animal figures, offering hope while inviting reflection on the romanticized idealization of ruins. Her ephemeral canvases, with subtle washes of crimson and cobalt, echo earlier Romantic ideals to reconsider humanity’s claim of mastery over nature and the marks left by our own shortcomings and greed.
Alongside these architectural references, Farhoudnia also examines natural processes in reverse. Pristine nature gives way to cultural landscapes and ornamental augmentation by gardening, which, if fully left to its devices, creates what could be a new form of natural organization. This mutated ecosystem is no less vibrant or complex; it is simply following a different natural order. Much like the Zone described by the Strugatsky brothers in The Roadside Picnic, a novel that has influenced Farhoudnia’s thinking about these works, the newly created landscapes possess uncanny qualities and may even help to regenerate the harmony we have long lost.
Farhoudnia’s works offer a rich opportunity to experience mystery and humor alongside the pure aesthetic pleasure of reveling in a subtle and resonant color palette and the complexity of Anthropocene landscaping. She presents a novel approach to contemplating what might be found 300 years from now. And, as she playfully suggests, we might all enjoy some crunchy pickles while gazing at Monet’s Water Lilies.
*The press release is based on the curatorial essay by Nina Chkareuli-Mdivani.
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Artist
Saba Farhoudnia (b. 1987, Tehran, Iran) honed her skills by earning B.F.A. and M.A. from the University of Science and Culture in Tehran, Iran. Saba also received a second M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She is an Artist in Residence at Wave Hill (New York, 2025), an Artist In the Marketplace fellow at Bronx Museum of the Arts (New York, 2020), an awardee of the Queens Arts Fund Grant (New York, 2024) and an Artist in Residence at the Fashion Institute Technology of Art (New York, 2023). Saba’s work has been seen worldwide, including Rossi & Rossi Gallery (Hong Kong, 2025), Make Room (Los Angeles, 2024), Fou Gallery (New York, 2024/2025), Bronx Museum (New York, 2024), Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (New York, 2022), Reza Abbasi Museum (Tehran, Iran, 2002). Her work can also be found in such periodicals as Widewalls, Dovetail, BoldJourney, Tussle, Studio International, Art Spiel, Thalia Magazine, and Words Without Borders among others. Her work is in the collection of Spring Bamboo Group (Shanghai), Wind Collection (Singapore).
Curator
Nina Chkareuli-Mdivani (she/her) is a Georgian-born and New York-based independent curator, writer, and researcher. She holds undergraduate degrees in International Relations and Gender Studies from Tbilisi State University and Mount Holyoke College, and a graduate degree in Museum Studies from the City University of New York. Chkareuli-Mdivani's book, King is Female, published in October 2018 in Berlin by Wienand Verlag, explores the lives of three Georgian women artists and is the first publication to investigate questions of feminine identity in the context of the Eastern European historical, social, and cultural transformation of the last twenty years. Since 2017, Chkareuli-Mdivani has regularly contributed reviews, essays, and interviews to Artforum, Berlin Art Link, e-flux, Flash Art Magazine, Hot Coffee Conversations, Hyperallergic, JANE Magazine Australia, Le Quotidien de l'Art, post.MoMA, NERO Editions Italy, Overstandard, Spaghetti Boost, The Art Newspaper, The Brooklyn Rail, White Hot Magazine, and others. She has curated over ten exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles (U.S.), Iserlohn and Berlin (Germany), Daugavpils (Latvia), and Tbilisi (Georgia). Her research involves the intersection of art history, museum, and decolonization studies, focusing on totalitarian art and trauma theory; she has extensively written on the erasure of culture and recontextualization of Soviet and contemporary art within Eastern European and Western contexts.
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