BEHIND THE CANVASES​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
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Soozan Shahabi Lavasani is a Vancouver-based visual artist working primarily in figurative painting. Beginning her artistic journey at the age of sixteen, she has developed a practice shaped by both formal training in Art and a degree in Graphic Design.

Since 2011, her work has increasingly focused on erotic and nude themes, exploring intimacy, vulnerability, and emotional presence through the human figure. Through a direct figurative language, her work engages with perception, identity, and the complexity of human experience. She held her first international exhibition in New York in 2013 and has since participated in exhibitions across Europe and North America.

Fluent in Persian, English, and French, Soozan continues to expand her artistic practice through an ongoing exploration of form, perception, and identity.​​​​​

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

The purpose of the naked style “House of Our Soul” collection is to break the taboo
and to create better communication between humans and their naked bodies. Also to break the shame that barriers understanding and seeing the natural beauty of the human body in the true sense. There is no united message between the artworks. Each painting has its own meaning. Therefore, the viewer based on his/ her own perception and understanding will experience the emotion and the connection between him/ her and the artwork. The contradiction between the figure and empty space is a sort of solid and fundamental expression of lack of communication between the humans and the world they live in. Due to the occurrence which happens in the photography art I use it as a companion for inspiring my works. Although this is a regulation according to which the painting results in a visual occurrence that is inside the artist’s soul. But this is also a fact that figure-showing is a prerequisite of painting. Although in artistic works the criticism of the thinking is a reciprocal reply to the display of the artistic; I personally prefer the absence of interpretation and separation of the viewer of the things inside the work because painting has its own language and cannot be converted into words. Truly there must be a viewpoint in accordance with each personal opinion in order to reveal that personal opinion. The person expresses
the world according to that opinion and viewpoint which is beautiful. In terms of
preference the subject is inferior in regard to the viewpoint. Although we might have
the same viewpoint in viewing a painting; this does not mean that we experience the
same mental responses concerning the subject. All of us as individuals experience
alterations and transformations which we express with more or less transparency.
What affects and impresses me with a special viewpoint might never impress
somebody else. However we can rightly suppose that there might be some
supplementary viewpoints for any special viewpoint which can connect the precise
understandings to conscious self-knowledge with special tendency.
What I like is the fact that the viewers of my works come to see them with their feelings
because the feelings never tell any lies, I expect them to be sincere toward their
feelings and not try to understand the painting and look for the story because they
might be confused and lost.