In these images, I aim to depict the complexities of intimacy in a world in which relations outside of heterosexuality are subject to suspicion and ridicule, attitudes deeply informed by broader cultural and religious forces. Repression, shame, unbridled enthusiasm, the desire to control and decorate all commingle in an attempt to represent these identities visually. Although I am interested in human interaction and dynamics, the works are often allegorical, shifting these ideas of figurative representation into a world of plants, animals, and other nonhuman beings. This

Shards of found tile, figure studies, fine-art reproductions, yesterday’s papers, life drawings, album covers, museum drawings, a potted ivy, photos of friends passed, and a pile of discarded wood—these are fragments of life. They are evidence of a variety of experiences. They are guests arriving and slipping away from a gathering. Sometimes they have urgent and important things to say. Sometimes they are bores. Sometimes they are loud; they argue and interrupt one another. Sometimes they are wallflowers. But to listen to the conversation and remain

My paintings use the deconstruction of narrative and the disembodiment of gesture to create imagined spaces and navigate impossible distances. I approach each painting as if it were a stage—actors are arranged, props are placed, and a fiction or allegory is created. The objects and imagery in my paintings arise from dreams, mythology, ancestral history, poetry, geological phenomena, and scraps of paper around the studio. As the images converge on the picture plane, the objects inherit new life through context and juxtaposition. Each object gives

My practice is intrinsically linked to my life experiences, yet it opens a space in which to recast memories and process the paradoxes of my childhood in Tehran, and to ground my perspective as an Iranian now living in the US. Born soon after the Islamic Revolution, I witnessed my country’s transformation from a Western-friendly monarchy into a suppressive theocratic republic. My paintings describe the double life I have always led, adhering to Islamic law in public while thinking and acting freely in private.

The timelessness of nature reveals that it contains the history of countless lives that have come and gone, leaving behind thousands of dramas. I’m interested in the spiritual bonds between humans and their ancestral lands and nature’s generosity, rigor, and freedom. I’m imagining that these figures embody this spirit of nature in my work.

The imaginary landscapes come from places I have actually visited or those I have seen in my dreams. It is a rearrangement of accumulated memories and imaginings, recalling their atmospheres as something that remains in our shared unconscious.

My practice explores the identity of the in-between, the overlap in the Venn diagram of two cultures. As a Romanian-born, US-raised artist, I want to preserve and broadcast links to the cultures of my upbringing and birthplace. My understanding and experience of Romania has always been defined by my family. In the wake of my last grandparent’s death, the relationship becomes unclear. In my attempts to ground and define my own identity, I look to my parents and grandparents for cues on how they made a home for themselves wherever they went, reflecting their experiences with

Libby Rosa’s work blurs the distinction between abstraction and representation, causing cognitive dissonance. The painterly situations showcase the metamorphic nature of paint. Questioning where the representational motifs start and stop and where the painterly abstractions begin and end is central to how the work is visually experienced.

My current paintings respond to the lack of Asian American representation in portraiture within modern and contemporary Western art institutions. I question the idea of visibility, or invisibility—who is remembered in history, and who is forgotten. Believing that figurative work has the ability to empower one’s sense of self-worth, and with Asian Americans living in a society that rarely shows their faces in everyday media, I set out to paint these portraits as efforts to help a community feel like they belong to a greater social conversation.

I paint an alternative universe somewhere between dusk and dawn that is mysterious and melancholy via landscapes that are vacant, possibly dangerous, but peaceful.

When discussing Graham Chapman’s funeral, John Cleese talked about humor and seriousness, and argued that the two are not mutually exclusive. Seriousness, he said, is often confused with solemnity, which should be reserved for only the most dire situations, if for nothing at all. Humor is a tool that allows people to cope serious matters. Regardless of his current controversy, I still believe in Cleese’s sentiment.