An Orphan in the Territory of Giants is Sofia Pashaei’s most personal series of works to date. Her paintings have always told a story. In the paintings for this show she is invested in her own diasporic subjectivity; and, central to the work is the exploration of the "mother tongue" and the profound impact of not speaking it.

An Orphan in the Territory of Giants is Sofia Pashaei’s most personal series of works to date. Her paintings have always told a story. Up until now, these stories have hinted at but have never fully parsed her own identity as a woman raised in Sweden by Iranian parents. They have been, and remain to be, broadly about the ‘other,’ about changes in relationships over time, about secrets, missed connections, feeling invisible, and the concept of home in relation to the meanings of its spaces and places. But, in the paintings for this show she is invested in her own diasporic subjectivity; and, central to the work is the exploration of the "mother tongue" and the profound impact of not speaking it. This series looks to her immediate family and the physical home as a substitute for a ‘homeland’. She navigates the sense of not belonging within layered identities that are all marked by a sense of longing. Be it the longing inside the home to speak the language of her parents, or the longing outside of her home to speak the cultural and societal vernacular of the country she grew up in. The works capture her exploration of a linguistic disconnection, which plunges moments into the untranslatable where nuances of culture, history, and personal experience defy easy expression. The figures in the works are often expressionless as if a language has not been given to them, and they search for and never find a connection; their eyes constantly look in different directions. A nod to Wittgenstein's phrase: ‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world’.