Studio Pin is thrilled to debut its micro-collective with a series of cyanotypes on silk by New York–based artist Haley Darya Parsa. As part of our summer launch, the Studio is hosting a shoppable selection of unique works from the artist’s ongoing series, Tracing a Border, depicting the fence gates surrounding Parsa’s house in New York and her family’s yard in Texas. These cyanotypes live as artworks first, but are versatile in their use:  they can be hung or framed as a tapestry, or worn as a headscarf or bandana.

Using sunlight as a direct material in her work, Parsa views the sun poetically and politically, considering larger ideas of immigration and separation, as well as growth and renewal. As Parsa lives in the U.S. with much of her family in Iran and abroad, the sun, for her, becomes a border-crossing mechanism, encompassing both distance and connection as it travels between them.

Cyanotypes are one of the oldest photographic printing processes; it is camera-less and can only be activated through exposure to light. One can place an object or a photo negative onto photosensitive fabric or paper, expose it to the light, and a silhouette image is formed.

The available works document the sun at various locations and intervals throughout the day all from the past year.

“With cyanotypes / sun-printing, there is power in shadows. A shadow is a companion, a ghost, a memory, a silhouette, a signifier of the past, a vessel, the proof of both absence and presence, and something removed from its origin but forever tied to it.”

– Haley Darya Parsa

Haley Darya Parsa works in a variety of mediums, engaging in painting, fabric-dyeing, cyanotypes, print, and sculpture. Parsa investigates the ways in which images, objects, and rituals embedded in personal histories can relate to a larger cultural context. Having grown up in Texas as Iranian-American, she places her family and heritage under an intimate meditative lens, reflecting on ideas of distance, separation, memorialization, and connection. Her work is both sentimental and critical, thinking about how we read, identify, and value things.

Born in Dallas, Texas, Parsa received her BFA from the University of Texas at Austin before moving to New York, NY where she currently lives and works. She has had recent solo shows at Stop-Gap Projects, Columbia, Missouri, Third Room Project in Portland, OR, and Winterfeldtstr 56 in Berlin, Germany. In 2022, Parsa’s work appeared in the Northeast issue 158 of New American Paintings. In 2021, Parsa’s work appeared in Art Maze Magazine and Maake Magazine.

To learn more about Parsa’s practice, please visit www.haleyparsa.com.

Parsa’s cyantype process. © Haley Darya Parsa. Courtesy the artist

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