Rand Maeeni

(b. Baghdad; based in Sausalito, California)

Rand Maeeni is an abstract painter whose practice engages epigenetics as a framework for understanding plasticity. Her work investigates how inherited structures are shaped, regulated, and rewritten by lived conditions over time. She approaches history, predisposition, and embodied memory not as fixed architectures, but as responsive systems continually modulated by exposure, environment, and experience. Working primarily in acrylic and oil, Maeeni develops materially dense, layered surfaces in which structure and gesture remain in visible tension.

Her paintings are built through a process of accumulation and regulation. Each work begins with a deliberately imposed structural system that establishes initial conditions the painting must operate within. Over time, this underlying framework is subjected to dense, sedimentary layers of paint that respond to what lies beneath. Forms are not erased but buried, compressed, and partially reactivated as new layers accrue. Through sustained overwriting and resistance, each painting gradually shifts its internal logic, allowing alternate compositions and realities to emerge.

The resulting surfaces are dense and tactile, oscillating between moments of structural legibility and gestural dissolution. Within these strata, fragments of figuration, including faces or bodily suggestions, occasionally emerge and recede, registering less as representational subjects than as perceptual residues within the layered field.

This method mirrors biological adaptation through a continuous dialogue between constraint and plasticity. The canvas becomes a site where inherited conditions persist while remaining open to modulation. Maeeni is interested in the malleability of the self, the capacity to interrupt patterns, regulate codes, and alter outcomes that once appeared complete. Her work reflects on the body as archive, a surface that records residue, pressure, and the possibility of reconfiguration. Maeeni’s visual language has developed through years of sustained studio inquiry into systems and structure prior to entering the public exhibition context.

Born in Baghdad and shaped by formative years in Dubai, Maeeni’s perspective is informed by early exposure to multiple cultural and visual environments, alongside a sustained interest in how psychological and philosophical frameworks shape perception and selfhood. She currently lives and works in Sausalito, where coastal landscapes and the constant interplay between land and water echo her interest in mutable systems and transitional states.