Maggie Evans 
Salman Khoshroo is an Iranian artist who has been creating wool portraiture series for decades. Recently, he’s taken wool sculpting to a new level by adding more depth and detail to his work. Rather than just using roving as the base of his sculptures, Salman uses dyed rovings that are manually stretched and curled into facial features, beards, and coifs that pair the supple shape and color of the raw materials with a unique expression.
In this art set, Khoshroo explores the concept that an individual can be engulfed by something as terrifying and destructive as a natural disaster. The artist is able to articulate these concepts in his work through more stable structures than before, such as velvet or synthetic fur.
The idea that an individual could find themselves embroiled in personal trauma has been explored heavily throughout Khoshroo’s previous pieces; however, with each new piece, he creates change becomes evident – while still working around themes like quarantine and disasters, there are now sturdier materials used alongside traditional ones like plastics or plaster which demonstrate how therapeutic creating artwork can be for him too when we see creative process evolving from one thing into another entirely different just over time.
Khoshroo’s work with woolen portraits is a therapeutic process that has helped him through his own experience of contracting the virus. These delicate and vulnerable pieces resonate with Khoshroo, as he feels this need to find new materials to reinvent his practice. The warmth and intimacy given off by these portraits make them an intriguing medium for interaction between artist and viewer alike – it provokes our “nurture instinct.”
In addition to the wool portraits shown here, Khoshroo has been creating sculptures made of foam paint. The full busts are also created with natural fiber and can be seen on his website and Instagram.
