Rand Maeeni

(b. Baghdad; based in San Francisco)

Artist Statement

My practice engages epigenetics as a framework for understanding plasticity. While inheritance is often understood as a fixed architecture, biology reveals it as a fluid, responsive system shaped by conditions, exposure, and time. I am interested in the malleability of the self: the capacity to interrupt a pattern, to modulate a code, and to alter the outcome of a composition that once appeared finished.

I paint the tension between inherited scripts of history, predisposition, and residue, and the ongoing processes through which the body adapts, regulates, and reconfigures itself.

I approach the canvas as a site of accumulation and regulation. Each work begins with a deliberately imposed structural system, or visual predisposition, establishing conditions the painting must initially operate within. Over time, this structure is subjected to dense, sedimentary layers of paint that respond to what lies beneath. Forms are not erased but buried, compressed, or partially reactivated as new layers accumulate. Through sustained overwriting and resistance, the painting shifts its internal logic, allowing a different reality to emerge from the conditions of the surface itself.

The paintings function as material evidence of change, registering how sustained contact can alter expression and allow a new configuration to surface.

Bio

Rand Maeeni is an abstract painter based in San Francisco. Her practice engages epigenetics as a conceptual framework, exploring plasticity, inheritance, and the conditions under which expression can change over time.

Originally from Iraq and raised between Baghdad and Dubai, Maeeni studied Visual Communication at the American University of Sharjah. She spent over a decade in creative direction, co-founding a design studio that grew into a full-service agency and later leading brand identity for a U.S. technology company.

In 2025, she established her full-time studio practice and continues to live and work in California