Sorour Fattahi, Once Fallen… (Detail), 2025, human hair stitched onto silk organza, 72 cm x 60cm. Photo: Supplied.
As a child, Sorour Fattahi was surrounded by women who crafted with textiles. Sorour’s deeply personal artistic work uses whatever medium best suits her original concept.
This prompted Sorour to create a series of paintings of long-haired, naked women, often turned away from the viewer, holding scissors and combs. The paintings incorporate actual hair, a symbol of beauty in Persian poetry, alongside mirror writing and Persian calligraphy.
“The texts were ones I had used in therapy; because they’re hard to read, they become a visual element. I needed to ‘prune’ myself, which is why I used the feminine images of combing and cutting hair. The women were turned away because that was a time when I was turning into myself rather than to the outside world.”
Sorour kept her fallen hair and began to stitch it into self-portraits, a process of putting herself back together, which is the subject of her current exhibition.
“The artworks are about displacement. Minorities are considered different; being a migrant involves a change of language, a change of culture, and a change in our sense of belonging – the sense of being in a different place. It is similar to hair loss.”
Sorour’s exhibition, The Hidden and the Held, is at Redland Art Gallery until 22 March 2026.
