Sahar Ghavami The princess & the purr (2025)

framed: 180h × 120w cm

Acrylic on canvas

The work draws on the structure of 'The Princess and the Pea', reconfigured through conditions of physical limitation and separation. A figure rests at the top of an elevated, cake-like formation, layered, soft, and excessive in its construction, yet the vertical distance becomes the defining condition of the image. Through these layers we see the presence of what remains out of reach: the cats positioned between the tiers. The composition operates through displacement. Proximity is established but not fulfilled; the figures occupy the same space, but cannot fully connect. The stacked structure reads as both mattress and memory: its exaggerated softness suggesting comfort and reinforcing distance. The work shifts the original fable’s premise from sensitivity to obstruction, replacing a single point of disturbance with a sustained condition of separation. At the base of the structure, a small bear introduces a secondary register. Positioned apart from the central arrangement, it recalls an early, formative experience of loss - minor, but persistent. In Sahar Ghavami’s practice, such details function as accumulative markers, where personal memory extends into broader systems of attachment and absence.