Artist Reimagines Renaissance Era Paintings with Powerful Women

Wipe The Garden of Earthly Delights clean of couples and men, and it's a few nude women, dancing across a fantastic pastel landscape. Sanam Khatibi paints a magical world, just ever-so-slightly detached from reality and rooted in Renaissance imagery.

"I think the core of my practice deals with our primal impulses, bestiality, and our relationship to power structures," Khatibi tells Creators. "I question our ambiguous relation to dominance and submission. I am interested in our ambivalent nature to power, violence, and sensuality, and how closely they can be related."

The Iranian-born artist creates a landscape where women are hunters and exclaim their sensuality with titles like "Everything's at home except your wife" or "With the valour of my tongue." "I guess my girls were never told 'Don't play with your food!'" she says.

However Khatibi's technical inspirations are much more classical. "My work has been influenced more by the old masters, which I find more and more fascinating," she says. "I discovered Lucas Cranach's work a few years ago, which ignited my passion for the old masters and the Renaissance period."

Khatibi also cites the work of Frida Kahlo, Hieronymus Bosch, and Henry Darger as inspirations. The classic stories and literature of Persia, like The Book of Kings and Kalila and Dimna also influenced Khatibi's outlook. They're fables and history lessons brought to the public through the ages with a combination of mysticism and animal personification.

In September, Khatibi will display a solo show at Rodolphe Janssen gallery during the Brussels Gallery Weekend. In November, she will be part of a group show at Various Small Fires in Los Angeles. Follow Khatibi's work on her Instagram and visit her website.

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