Neda Azimi is a painter with extensive experience in various mediums. Over two decades of her artistic career, she has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions across different countries and has also taught art in renowned institutions. Up until 2021, her paintings explored themes such as nature, trees, women, sedative drugs, and mood-enhancing hormones.
In the "Sedative" series, her paintings are presented in an abstract manner. The artist attempts to blend forms into one another through harmony, rendering the line ineffective as a boundary-defining element. Abstract volumes emerge through layering colors and glazes, evoking foggy, hazy, and dreamlike spaces, symbolizing the calming effects of sedative drugs.
In the "A Tree Has Grown in My House" series, she portrays metamorphosed forms of the female body. The figures, placed in varied contexts, resist realistic representation and allude to taboo issues surrounding women.
In her exhibition statements, the artist draws a connection between the abstract spaces in her paintings and the calming effects of sedative drugs and the happiness-inducing serotonin hormone. She believes her work represents an attempt to break free from theoretical articulation in favor of a commitment to representational forms. For Neda, painting is an act of simplification, a conscious detachment, and a transcendence—a creative experience unbound by specific time or place.
In the "Serotonin" series, the tree becomes her sole connection to life—a natural element that serves as a pillar and stimulates serotonin production. Created during the pandemic, these paintings represent a shift for the artist, who previously spent seven years painting directly in nature. This new series reflects her internal visualization of nature.
Neda Azimi’s focus in the "Serotonin" and "Sedative" series is deeply personal. Her approach is not one of confrontation but rather an intentional turning away and letting go, in pursuit of inner peace imbued with a mystical quality. She sees theoretical articulation as a disruptive force to the ideas and emotions she deliberately chooses to overlook. Instead of addressing social issues, her work adopts a spiritual perspective reminiscent of the early 20th-century pioneers of abstract art, who turned away from a tumultuous world grappling with war. Similarly, she rejects comprehensible, figurative forms in her work.
Following her installation "Prosthetic Loves", Neda experienced a turning point in her approach to women’s issues and gender equality. The feedback from male viewers, who struggled to grasp the realities of women’s experiences around motherhood, prompted her to adopt a more feminist perspective in her latest series.