Stories in Thousand Pieces is a solo exhibition by Iranian-Egyptian artist and poet Parinaz Eleish Gharagozlou, on display at Leila Heller Gallery until 14 January 2026. The show brings together a series of large-scale mixed-media works that immerse viewers in an intricate visual mosaic of lived experience, where memory, emotion, history, and everyday life converge in vibrant, layered compositions.
From a distance, Gharagozlou’s canvases present striking architectural forms, landscapes, or spatial compositions. As you approach, however, they reveal a constellation of countless fragments (newspaper clippings, textured paint, and other minute elements), each carrying its own narrative. These fragments speak to laughter and pain, hope and loss, and the fleeting yet resonant moments that constitute human existence. Close inspection invites intimate reflection, while the works’ unframed edges suggest that stories and histories extend beyond the borders of the canvas itself.
Gharagozlou’s practice thrives on the tension between detail and totality. She constructs layered realities that blur boundaries between the personal and the collective, reminding us that individual memories and shared histories are always interwoven. Newspapers and found materials recur in her work as both witnesses to and manipulators of time, reflecting the way narratives shift in meaning as they’re told and retold.
About the artist
Parinaz Eleish Gharagozlou was born in Tehran to an Iranian mother and an Egyptian father, and spent her early years in Iran before completing her schooling in Switzerland and later moving to the USA. She studied film production and painting, earning a BFA from Emerson College and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and went on to earn MFAs in both film production (Boston University) and English writing and poetry (University of New Hampshire).
Over the years, her multifaceted career has spanned film production, faux-finish painting, jewellery design, poetry, and novel writing alongside her painting practice. Gharagozlou’s art has been featured internationally, including at Art Dubai 2024 and previous exhibitions at Leila Heller Gallery.
In Stories in Thousand Pieces, Gharagozlou invites audiences to engage deeply with the fragments of life, acknowledging both their individuality and the larger human stories they compose. It is a meditation on how the scattered pieces of memory and experience can be woven back into something whole, speaking to resilience, identity, and the shared pulse of everyday existence.
To get more information about Stories in Thousand Pieces, please visit the official web page of the exhibition.
In addition, you might be interested in viewing Houselessness by Mohammed Joha and Moments of Hope by Besher Koushaji.
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