Opening "Roya Amigh: Presence of the Absent"

KODA presents Presence of the Absent, a solo exhibition by Bay Area–based artist Roya Amigh, whose work examines the fragile terrain where women’s movements, personal histories, and collective memory intersect. Across installations, drawings, and works on paper created between 2019-2026, the exhibition traces how Amigh’s practice moves between drawing and textile to explore identity through gender, class, sexuality, and the lived experiences of women across generations.

Amigh constructs layered surfaces from transparent paper and lace before attaching small drawings, mirror fragments, and pieces of cloth. She then cuts these surfaces apart, folds some fragments into three-dimensional forms, and stitches them back together, leaving deliberate gaps. Connections are repeatedly undone and remade, allowing relationships between fragments to shift as the work develops. Removed pieces are never discarded; what feels unnecessary in one work becomes essential in another. Through this slow cycle of cutting, mending, and reassembling, subtraction becomes a generative force,…