Stacy Mehrfar
Stacy Arezou Mehrfar is a visual artist based in New York City. Mehrfar works with the photographic medium to build psychologically charged immersive presentations exploring the intrinsic connections between community and landscape. Her work has been exhibited at the International Center for Photography (ICP), KMAC Contemporary Art Museum, TEDxSydney, and ClampArt. She has received the Joseph Robert Foundation Artist Grant, the Puffin Foundation Grant, the Australian Postgraduate Award, and the Australian Artist Grant. Her work has been reviewed and featured in New Art City, Collector Daily, L’œil de la Photographie, British Journal of Photography, and The New Yorker. Mehrfar earned her MFA (Research) in Photomedia from the University of NSW School of Art and Design, Sydney, and her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She holds a Certificate in Creative Practices from ICP. She serves as faculty at ICP, The School of Visual Arts, and PhotoPhlo. Arezou, her middle name, means wish in Farsi.
Medium:
Visual Arts/ Photography, Video, Books, and Installations
Project Vision:
People say the dead often reach out through dreams, signs, or otherwise subtle ways. It’s been 5 months since my father passed away, and I’m continuously searching for his presence. I began making photographs of light a few weeks after he left us – looking for signs of his spirit in my everyday life. These pictures are made with my medium format camera, using expired film I have kept in my fridge for over a decade. The subject is the light as both a metaphor and medium. I make these pictures quickly, exposing the highlights (in opposition to the shadows) and allowing chance to activate the frame. Working with expired film can produce unique, unpredictable qualities such as color shifts, muted tones, subtle fading, and soft exposures because as the film ages, its chemical stability degrades. I have approximately 200 roles to expose. I expect the final form of this work, whether it will be prints, video, or a site-specific installation, to evolve with the reading of Jewish texts on change.
www.stacymehrfar.com