Sahar Ghavami Love Allergies (2023)

encadré: 50h × 40w cm

Acrylic on canvas

‘Love Allergies’ is closely tied to a recent shift in Sahar Ghavami’s life and work. After developing a severe autoimmune response that limits prolonged contact, particularly with materials and environments she once moved through freely, her practice has had to adjust. Painting itself can trigger reactions, yet she continues to work through it, modifying the process. The same applies to her long-standing relationship with animals. Once able to keep and care for them continuously, she now often rescues and rehomes them, maintaining proximity in a more restricted form. This condition structures the image: it is physical and specific. The central figure remains “unbothered”, “dusted in confetti”, and “cherry-crowned”, as her eyes are swollen, her cheeks flushed, and she is smiling anyway. The work holds its contradiction in plain view: to love what irritates, to ache from what brings joy, and to decide, repeatedly, that it remains worth it. “There is something deeply honest in an allergy”, the artist notes. “The body does not lie about what it has been close to”. In this work, that idea becomes the organizing logic. Pain is not framed as interruption, but as evidence of contact – of having remained close, despite the cost.