Space is the position and place of the body, and therefore, every point within it can be contemplated as a being. The spaces in this collection are suspended moments in time, released into a wordless dialogue between things, between belonging and placelessness, in a stillness where lived bodies are sensed before collapse takes over. This is the very spatialized world in which everyone shares, where everything exists and is seen. And yet, it seems as though nothing appears ordinary anymore. Everything is still, silent, and frozen, just as it was at the beginning of the world.
SARAI Gallery is pleased to present "The Edges", a solo exhibition by Ayda Roozbayani, on view from August 1 to 15, 2025. Marking her second solo presentation with the gallery, this new body of work deepens Roozbayani's engagement with themes of solitude, estrangement, and adaptation in contemporary life.
In "The Edges", Roozbayani investigates the unsettling experience of modern humans navigating an increasingly unstable world. Her works evoke a space caught between familiar pasts and uncertain futures, reflecting the unavoidable immersion in urbanized, industrial environments and the complex emotional and psychological responses they provoke.
Born in Zahedan and raised in the coastal city of Chabahar, Roozbayani's connection to water runs deep. In her work, the sea is not scenery. It is memory, metaphor, border. It marks the edges of experience, the places where distance begins. The ocean recurs not to soothe but as a reminder of absence, of separation, of the inner spaces we carry.
Roozbayani captures the psychological residue of modern living, the quiet confusion of existing in spaces that seem increasingly detached from nature, from community, even from the self. Her compositions, built through layers of oil paint, are drawn from photographs of real locations, then subtly transformed into imagined landscapes where the boundaries of time and place begin to dissolve.
Through a visual language that is both deeply personal and widely resonant, Roozbayani articulates the silent tensions of contemporary existence. Rather than offer overt critique, her work explores the subtle, often unspoken effects of adaptation, survival, and transformation in an increasingly unstable world.
