About the Exhibition

For the next iteration of its Chicago Works series, the MCA presents the first solo museum exhibition of artist Maryam Taghavi (b. Tehran, Iran; based in Chicago, IL).

Taghavi’s practice insists on positionality: where one stands determines what—and how—one sees. For the past several years, her work with talismans, calligraphy, and the Islamic occult has coalesced into a series of sculptures and paintings that strive to signify the unseen. In her upcoming MCA exhibition, Taghavi creates new works that expand her interest in perception by interrogating the space between the illusive vanishing point of the horizon and the immutability of distance.

Taghavi’s exhibition will take over the MCA’s Turner Gallery on the fourth floor, culminating in an immersive installation that invites audiences to close one eye and peer with the other, to adjust their gaze to new spatial possibilities, and to imagine a relationship with what is imperceptible.

About the Artist

Maryam Taghavi is an artist and educator born in Tehran, Iran, and a resident of Chicago. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University and Master of Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), where she was the recipient of The New Artist Society Scholarship. Her art engages with a range of disciplines such as painting, drawing, sculpture, performance, publication, and installation. She has exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as LAXART, Queens Museum, Exterressa Museum, Chicago Cultural Center, and Driehaus Museum, among others. In 2023 her sculpture work was commissioned by the City of Chicago to be permanently installed at O’Hare International Airport’s Terminal 5.

Maryam Taghavi is the 21st artist to be part of Chicago Works, a solo exhibition series at the MCA that features artists who are shaping the contemporary art scene both in the city and beyond. This exhibition will be the first MCA exhibition to be fully translated into Persian.

Chicago Works: Maryam Taghavi is organized by Bana Kattan, Pamela Alper Associate Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, with Kamala GhaneaBassiri, Visual Arts Intern.