Long nails, muscly limbs, fishnet stockings, sport socks, body hair, wigs, makeup, and tattoos, are some of the reoccurring elements that permeate the body of work comprising Silent Stars, Mahsa Merci's solo show at Maytens Projects in Toronto. Hailing from Iran, a country in which she faced censorship and oppression as an artist and a queer woman, the Toronto-based artists has been focusing on the restrictiveness of social norms, especially for the LGBTQIA+ community and this exhibition presents the culmination of those efforts from the past two years.

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Long nails, muscly limbs, fishnet stockings, sport socks, body hair, wigs, makeup, and tattoos, are some of the reoccurring elements that permeate the body of work comprising Silent Stars, Mahsa Merci's solo show at Maytens Projects in Toronto. Hailing from Iran, a country in which she faced censorship and oppression as an artist and a queer woman, the Toronto-based artists has been focusing on the restrictiveness of social norms, especially for the LGBTQIA+ community and this exhibition presents the culmination of those efforts from the past two years.

Comprising a variety of works, from oil portraits over various scales of sculptures and mixed-media installations to video animation, Merci is interested in introducing the "different aspects of gender, identity, sexuality, and beauty that upend patriarchal norms through multimedia". Both by depicting subjects that don't fit social norms in certain cultures as well as underlining some of the arcytepal elements of their appearance, the exhibition is meant to open boundaries and promote acceptance and closeness.

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