PLUS Magazine
Arghavan Khosravi: A Window and a Cage
Words PLUS MAGAZINE. Photography JAE KIM
June 12, 2026
A woman’s wrists are bound to an archway. An AirPod sits, improbably, in a Persian paradise garden. A sliced tree pushes out a single green sprout. In “What Remains,” Arghavan Khosravi‘s third solo show at Uffner & Liu, panels hinge open like small doors, black cords run between compartments, and a broken mirror returns your reflection in shards. At the heart of the exhibition are seven intimate works modeled on devotional altarpieces, objects that once promised resolution. Khosravi withholds it, turning her long examination of the systems that constrain women’s lives inward. We spoke with Khosravi about emotional residue, architecture as both window and cage, and why even her darkest images leave room for growth.
PLUS MAGAZINE The Altar Series draws from the structure of devotional altarpieces, from the hinged panels to the intimate scale and the sense of close looking they invite. What drew you to that format, and what possibilities did it open up for you?
ARGHAVAN KHOSRAVI The intimacy of these small-scale altarpieces stood out to me most. Unlike large altarpieces that become part of architecture, these were made for personal use and could travel with someone. I was really drawn to that idea of a close and private relationship with an object.
That also felt connected to what I was trying to do in this series. Compared to some of my previous work, these pieces feel more introspective and deal more with the emotional residue of growing up within systems that try to regulate women’s bodies and agency.
More generally, I’m often interested in taking forms or symbols from one context and placing them into another. I wasn’t drawn to the altarpiece because of its religious promise as much as I was engaged in its structure and possibilities. I had already been interested in multi-panel formats because, as an immigrant, that idea of existing in several spaces at once feels very familiar to me. A part of you still lives somewhere else while another part is trying to inhabit a new place. The altarpiece format naturally gave me a structure that could hold those different spaces together.
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