Roeya Amigh is a visual artist staying at Better Farm until June 24 through the betterArts Residency Program. Hers will be the featured work at this year's Better Festival June 20.

Roeya is an Iranian artist who earned a BFA and MFA in Tehran before completing a master's in fine arts degree in 2012 at Boston University.

"After completing my MFA at Boston University," she said, "I remained eager to explore and further develop relevant discourse alongside my studio practice. I worked as a research assistant for a project named “Women’s Worlds in Qajar, Iran” at Harvard University. My research was based on women’s authentic love letters, legal and financial documents, and manuscripts. Careful study undermined my perspective of typical Iranian women and shed new light on their real-life experiences in a way that was meaningful to me. My research efforts combined with personal experiences have led me to a new body of work that unpacks the concepts of identity, complexity, and social roles in Iranian women's lives."

Roeya's work has been shown in studios throughout Colorado, New York and Massachusetts; and she has attended artist residencies in Colorado, Spain, New York and Vermont.

"As an artist, I strive to ask important questions about the value of identity with respect to nationality and gender. My works are the crossroad where my identity as an Iranian woman meets society’s expectations and mythologies."

"I am intrigued by the thought of making works that resemble the set of a play," Roeya said of her process. "Using layers of paper, thread, and pieces of fabric and wood collectively give rise to their own story and my story. My work has been concerned with a physical haptic relationship with the story and how the story negotiates the identity and receives a world through the narrative. In recreating imagery that pieces together elements of different tales and legends depicted in Persian miniature, I am able to question and challenge the complexities within the stories of Iranian women."

During her betterArts residency, Roeya is creating a body of work that "represents a synthetic epic in which numerous interpretations and outcomes are evoked. In addition, I will make a second body of work to form a back-and-forth dialogue that responds to pre-existing conditions and highlights the fragility between material and metaphorical spaces. An assemblage of constructing imagery and materials allows me to redefine the haptic conditions of voids and think of how the surfaces trigger our sense of touch."

"As an artist in residence, my goals are to create work, develop relationships with artists and art professionals, and to use this experience as the context for further investigations. The betterArts Residency will take me to the next level as I learn how to support and establish myself as an artist with a fresh perspective."

To learn more about the betterArts residency program, click here.

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Introducing betterArts Resident Roeya Amigh

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