A Withering Can Be A Fire
Paintings and Cutouts
Casa Lü, CDMX, México
2026
A Withering Can Be A Fire emerged from a month-long residency in CDMX, where Jahan worked alongside four artists. The residency marked the beginning of a new body of work titled Lead سرنج — a reading of death, and the ways the underworld weaves itself into our lives.
During that time, she spent her days capturing shadows cast by branches in the garden onto canvas panels in oil. Each of the twelve tiles was traced at a specific hour, so that together they form a single, unfolding whole. The practice led her toward thoughts of time, and of our own ephemerality in relation to a distant star — the one we silently revolve around, day by day.
Lead seeks to hold absence, loss, and the material presence of death in our surroundings. Shadow became her central subject: the inseparable image that follows us through the day, dancing at our feet as we walk and talk, marking time, registering light, and affirming our place within a system that turns around a burning star.
The paintings began as sketches traced from foliage in the garden, and grew into a twelve-panel work — each piece drawn from the shadow of a specific hour. Scattered throughout the exhibition space and garden, butterfly cutouts accompany them.