Something Is Missing is a solo exhibition by Toronto-based Iranian artist Mahsa Merci that examines the queer body as abject and divided, shaped by forces that demand coherence yet punish its possibility. Drawing from Julia Kristeva’s notion of abjection—the collapse of boundaries between self and object—the exhibition considers how identity fractures when difference is cast as disorder.

For Merci, this fragmentation is a lived experience. In Iran, where queerness is criminalized, the self must splinter to survive, surfacing only in gestures, disguises, and distortions. In her paintings, sculptures, and installations, fragmentation becomes a way to reorder the self, inhabiting spaces where coherence cannot hold.

Faces layered with heavy makeup, mirrored surfaces that warp reflection, and shoes bristling with eyelashes unsettle the idea of beauty, revealing its proximity to unease and its entanglement with control. Across these works, abjection becomes both method and mirror, exposing the psychic cost of forced conformity while revealing what persists beyond it.

Here, abjection is not only a site of exclusion but a ground for introspection. Merci’s work dwells within the unresolved, tracing what remains when wholeness slips away.