Raana Farnoud (b.YEAR, CITY) is a painter whose practice explores the tension between presence and disappearance, beauty and unease. She is known for shifting between abstraction and figuration, cultivating a visual language that is distinctly her own. Her figurative works, marked by quiet complexity, stand apart both within her practice and the wider landscape of contemporary Iranian art. Avoiding traditional representational; Farnoud’s figures are not portraits, but presences. They occupy a suspended realm where inner life eclipses outward form.
Farnoud’s compositions evoke a quiet restlessness. Colour pools and retreats. Outlines fade. Surfaces pulse with ambiguity. Recurring shapes return in altered moods, as if trying on different states of being. Through gesture and repetition, she invites the viewer into a slow, intimate rhythm that honours fragility and resists resolution.
Over four decades, Farnoud has exhibited widely in Iran and internationally, including solo presentations at Emkan Gallery, Etemad Gallery, and Golestan Gallery in Tehran, as well as exhibitions in France, Germany, the USA, and China. Her work has featured in institutional shows at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art and Art Jameel, and in international art fairs including Art Dubai and Contemporary Istanbul.