Red balloons become potent symbols of promise, celebration, memory and remorse in a solo show of new work by Bahareh and Farzaneh Safarani at ShowUp on Harrison Avenue in South Boston. Step down into the lower-level, (mercifully cool) gallery and find yourself immersed in the Safarani Sisters' mysterious, ethereal world. The title of the show—Submerged in Time—is an invitation. The Safarani's work is so intimate, and the curation is so intentionally spare and uncrowded, that time feels slowed-down. It’s cathartic to be submerged in the artists’ meditative interiority.

Bahareh and Farzaneh Safarani in front of *Unraveling Joy* (2025) at ShowUp. Image: John Brewer, courtesy of ShowUp and the Safarani Sisters.

Submerged in Time includes thirteen pieces from the artists’ new body of work. All portray moments from a scene in which a female character readies a space for a party. But soon we realize that the space is not a home or an event venue, it’s the artists’ studio; and the party is not actually a party, rather it is a carefully staged performance of a party with all the recognizable trappings: strung lights, balloons, confetti, candles, paper garland. The character is an amalgamation of performances by both Bahareh and Farzaneh, the same character they have featured in their work since they began collaborating after graduate school. She is not so much self-portraiture, they tell me, as a portrayal of a separate soul who knows the artists as well as they know themselves.

When we met at the gallery, Farzaneh and Bahareh explained that the idea for the series developed over a period of about two years. They were interested in the power of the red balloon as a symbol, and the sense of nostalgia that follows celebrations.

(The red balloon holds an important place in art history. Below: Banksy’s Girl with Balloon and Paul Klee’s Red Balloon (Roter Balloon) 1922, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Estate of Karl Nierendorf.)

"We saw the red balloon as a powerful and versatile motif—one that instantly evokes the spirit of celebration yet carries deeper, more layered meanings. Its round, buoyant form can also suggest something as vital as a blood cell, tying it to the very core of life. The color red itself is charged with intensity; it can symbolize joy, passion, and love just as easily as it can suggest danger, violence, or death. In this way, the red balloon becomes more than a simple object. It is a visual metaphor for the full spectrum of human emotion, from elation to despair. It reflects the volatility of our inner world, echoing the way our feelings shift, rise, and fall, much like changes in our blood pressure, at once intimate, physical, and universal."

Installation view, *The Safarani Sisters: Submerged in Time* at ShowUp Gallery through September 28. Image: John Brewer, courtesy of ShowUp and the Safarani Sisters.

From there the idea took shape. The artists took thousands of photographs which act as sketches as they pinpoint their take on a concept. Creating space to understand oneself and embracing dualities are intentions central to the Safarani Sisters’ practice.

Identical twins born in Iran, the artists have lived and worked in Boston for the last eleven years, building a dedicated following and a passionate collector base. The sisters studied painting at Tehran University, and moved to Boston to further their education at Northeastern and the Museum School, discovering what Bahareh describes as “a lot of good art educators” and a “very sophisticated audience.”

At the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (now Tufts SMFA) they began experimenting with performance and video, ultimately layering video projection over their paintings. That experimentation birthed a collaborative process and a mystical style they have continued to cultivate through the years. Today their practice combines oil painting, video, performance and photography, and their “video-paintings” as they call them, have become their signature. With the exception of two mixed media pieces, Shadow of a Memory #1 and #2, all works exhibited in Submerged in Time include video projection. The show explores themes of celebration, memory, duality, paradox, longing and the intangible nature of time.

“We wanted to create an atmosphere [around] these celebrations, or these memories that we wanted to celebrate… They are not clear, they are foggy or there's a little distance. You cannot touch them, but you see them, you cannot go back there, but still you remember them... Or sometimes there are moments that we miss celebrating because we don't appreciate at that time that we should celebrate, but when the time passes, then we feel like, oh that moment should have been celebrated but we didn't realize it.”

The show is intentionally nonlinear, but feels somewhat anchored by two 45 x 60 inch works: Wishful Spectator and Unravelling Joy. Unraveling Joy portrays a cropped image of a figure attempting to untangle a mess of cords. Behind the screen and obstructed by red balloons, the figure is greatly abstracted, shadowy, only the hands darken in discernible outline. The artists’ painting technique has evolved markedly since their early work, becoming, as evidenced in this show, more refined and subtle, allowing for greater freedom of expression.

The video-paintings are all created to work alone without the projection. But the projection brings the scene to life. Their video and performances add a before-and-after-width to the depicted moment, extending time, deepening subjectivity. Projected on the painting of the figure at work in Unravelling Joy, is video of softly colored confetti falling to the floor. It transfixed me, left me submerged in the true power of this show’s meaning. Who hasn’t faced a struggle to untangle memories from each other and emotions from memories, to clear a space to find the clarity to move on, and to understand oneself?

The Safarani Sisters create artworks that capture otherwise fleeting, intangible moments filled with the sweet tension of life’s paradoxes. They pull apart what is inseparable. They isolate what is enmeshed. They reveal what is hidden.

Bahareh and Farzaneh Safarani in front of *Wishful Spectator* (2025) at ShowUp. Image: John Brewer, courtesy of ShowUp and the Safarani Sisters.

In Wishful Spectator the artists zoom out to reveal more of the space. We see that we are in a studio where a transparent screen has been set up in front of a projector. Balloons hang in front and rest on the floor in front of the screen. A figure peers in, barely visible on the side of the frame. Video captures a silhouetted woman dancing into the frame and striking a long match so that she can light candles on what might be a small birthday cake. Here the Treachery of Images-esque self-reflective nature of the show is most apparent. The video projector shown reveals the inner workings of the artists’ project.

*En-lightened*, *Leave the Moment Hanging,* and *Isolated Contentment* (all 2025). Oil on canvas and video projection. All 30 x 40 inches. Image: John Brewer, courtesy of ShowUp and the Safarani Sisters.

The show also includes three 30 x 40 inch pieces—En-lightened, Leave the Moment Hanging, and Isolated Contentment—which have been hung together almost in the manner of a triptych, and five tightly-cropped paintings of single red balloons, alternatively or simultaneously reflective and transparent. Two non-video works capture the source of remorse: Shadow of a Memory #1 and #2 are black and white photographs on which the artists affixed the spent red latex of popped balloons, the shriveled aftermath of celebration.

Farzaneh explained, “A lot is happening in just one balloon and that balloon could be like everything, all these memories could exist in a balloon and it's something very temporary. It pops and the memory is gone, and again we can't remember clearly, so the balloon is more like a door to remember all those levels [of experience], everything that was happening.”

The Safarani Sisters: Submerged In Time is on view at ShowUp from August 1 to September 28, 2025. 524B Harrison Avenue, Boston MA