Kiana Shahnia

Kiana Shahnia (b. 2000, Tehran) builds oil-on-panel paintings that expose spectatorship as a constructed and performative condition. Drawing from the spatial language of theatres, funhouses, and fairgrounds, Shahnia’s practice operates through seduction and misdirection, destabilizing orientation with promises of satisfaction. Painting extends beyond the two-dimensional plane to function as an object, a barrier, and a device. The audience becomes both participant and spectator, caught within structures that direct attention without offering resolution. Chairs, curtains, signs, and props are painted subjects that function as decoys. These ordinary forms carry embedded instructions that guide the viewer. Through repetition, fragmentation, and obstruction, the stability of the viewer's position begins to break down. Looking becomes a bodily negotiation: bending, aligning, and waiting alongside others who are being held to want to see the same suspended expectation.

Her work approaches – not as image, but as construction that reveals systems that regulate visibility, distribute roles, and condition desire. These arrangements are never resolved. Instead, the installations sustain instability, letting the mechanisms that govern looking expose themselves through their own absurdities and failures.

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