An Interview with Amir H. Fallah
Haley Laningham
For Those Who Fear Tomorrow, 2022 (acrylic on canvas)
Amir H. Fallah’s work defies the norms of Western portraiture. His figures are covered; he paints borders in ways which intersect the visual field of his pieces. His sculptures, too, are faceless—their bodies interrupted by negative space in the shape of a warplane or shell. In the suite of work we published, the viewer will find collage-like paintings and veiled figures armed with ornate weapons from Persian history. Fallah’s own artist statement says the following:
Amir H. Fallah creates paintings, murals, and installations that explore systems of representation embedded in the history of Western art. His ornate environments combine visual vocabularies of painting and collage to deconstruct traditional notions of identity formation, while simultaneously defying expectations of the genre for portraiture by removing or obscuring the central figure. Fallah wryly incorporates Western art historical references into paintings formally rooted in the pattern-based visual language of art historical works from the Middle East. In doing so, his paintings possess a hybridity that reflects his own background as an Iranian-American immigrant straddling cultures. Neither of this world nor the next, Fallah’s works reside in the liminal space of being ‘othered.’ The paintings utilize personal history as an entry point to discuss race, representation, and the memories of cultures and countries left behind. Through this process, the artist's works employ nuanced and emotive narratives that evoke an inquiry about identity, the immigrant experience, and the history of portraiture.
In this interview, we seek to discuss the historical context of these works and to provide a more detailed sense of the personal inspiration behind many of Fallah’s artistic choices.
See more of Amir H. Fallah’s work in Vol. 42.1 here.
Haley Laningham: This question feels imperative to begin with. In an interview with The New York Times, you speak on the impact the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran has had on you. You say you have many family members still in Iran and detail your cousins’ wish that people globally would amplify their voices during this time. You say you would indeed describe what is happening there as a revolution. How does the Woman, Life, Freedom movement connect with your current work? Can you speak specifically about this connection in any of the pieces you’ve given us to display?
Amir H. Fallah: Almost all the work I create connects with the current Woman, Life, Freedom movement. So much of my work deals with issues of identity, politics, immigration, and more. As an Iranian born in 1979, it’s impossible to escape the effects of the 1979 Revolution and its long-lasting ramifications. The current conditions in Iran are the descendants of the coup in 1953 orchestrated by America and Britain, the placing of the Shah by the West, and ultimately his overthrow by the Islamic Republic in 1979. All these events are interconnected. As a result, if I create any work about myself, I am also addressing both the history of Iran and the current climate there. It’s inescapable for this generation of Iranian artists.
For instance, For Those Who Fear Tomorrow is about my first memory in Iran. It was an air raid in Tehran where an entire community had to run out of their homes and into the streets in fear of the high-rise apartments being bombed. It’s about the collective trauma of living through war and fearing what tomorrow will bring. Foresight Prevents Blindness is also about the Iranian Revolution and how an entire generation (my parents' generation, specifically) was tricked by the Islamic Republic. They were sold a false bill of goods. They were promised democracy, but they got something much worse than the Shah.
HL: In previous interviews, you reveal that the process leading up to your figural paintings, which refute norms of portraiture, involves going into people’s houses and observing their belongings and domestic spaces. You say you do this to investigate ways of depicting identity with an absence of the features around which people are often profiled—probably, I think, in the same way you were and are profiled as an Iranian-American man. You want to make the portraits psychological, or like “Rorschach portraits” which you mention in your guest lecture with Cranbrook Academy of Art’s deSalle Auditorium (available on YouTube). Was your process the same for Defender, Guardian, and Peacekeeper?
AF: Originally, the veiled figures were portraits of friends and peers. However, over the last couple of years, I’ve shifted, and they all have become self-portraits in a sense. These three works were part of my show A War on Wars at Nazarian/Curcio Gallery last year. The show was a meditation on the long-lasting effects of war and was conceived and made while I watched the minute-by-minute footage of the war in Ukraine on my phone. Watching the POV footage of everyday citizens running into bomb shelters, fleeing tanks, and becoming refugees overnight made me think of my own childhood during the Iran-Iraq War. These three paintings each depict a figure holding a historical weapon from various periods of Persian history. They are these beautifully engraved and detailed weapons that are sold at auction and end up in museums. With enough time, their utilitarian purpose of being killing machines vanishes, and they are seen as beautiful, sculptural objects to be collected and coveted. I was thinking about how with enough time, the blood washes away from these symbols of death and destruction, and they have a much more sanitized life anew.
HL: In an interview with WOW x WOW, you talk about how you began using painted borders, inspired by Persian miniatures, in order to tell the viewer that all they need to pay attention to in the piece is already present. This choice was in part a resistance to Western norms in art. You describe this Western inheritance, saying, “In contemporary painting you hear a lot about how the canvas is an illusionistic field for the artist to create on. The painting is meant to continue off of the canvas, and the viewer is supposed to complete the image in their mind.” What led to your decision to draw the borders in a way which interrupts the visual field of the piece, as in For Those Who Fear Tomorrow, Urn, and Foresight Prevents Blindness?
AF: The borders began as a nod to Persian miniatures and as a way to define the edges of the works. However, over the past 15 years, they have become deconstructed. They weave in and out of the picture plane, pushing and pulling various figures and objects. My goal is to complicate the picture plane, using them as a path through the painting and creating uneasiness in the works where, depending on where you look on the painting, the image can either look flat or have depth. For me, this reinforces the feeling of them being a psychological space rather than a literal space. It’s a space where anything can happen, free of the laws of physics, gravity, depth, and space.
HL: What do you feel some level of collage enables for your work? Do you mean for it to reflect the demands of being an immigrant, constantly piecing one world together from past and present?
AF: That’s an interesting idea, but it’s not something that I’ve thought about before. For me, collage allows me to bring together disparate images that don’t belong. It’s a flattening of hierarchy, and therefore allows me to talk about the complexity of the times we're living in. When we’re on social media, in seconds we can read the news, see a photo of our friends at brunch, watch a video of a fashion show, view a post from a comedian, and engage with an art historian writing about Aboriginal art. There is a flattening of high and low, old and new, East and West. Collage allows me to create work that is a documentation of this time we’re all a part of. It allows me to put advertising, Persian miniatures, minimalist painting, hip-hop culture, and current politics all on the same playing field without any hierarchy.
HL: What do you think the negative space in the sculptures you’ve let us publish, Planes Above and Lost and Found, represents? I’m especially interested in this fighter jet inside Planes Above.
AF: These flat sculptures are part of a body of work called Silhouettes. I was pondering what it would be like if the experiences that define and change us not only affect us mentally but also physically alter our bodies. What if these experiences resulted in our physical structure changing and morphing? The bodies start as generic silhouettes of a figure, but as they move through time and space, they absorb symbols and images that connect to a certain memory, event, or life shift.
For Planes Above, the image of the plane is the silhouette of the most common Iraqi plane that bombed Iran. As I mentioned earlier in the interview, my first memory was of an air raid. It was nighttime, and I could hear the planes but couldn’t see them. At the age of four, I made a gun-shaped gesture with my hand and pointed it to the sky, pretending to shoot the Iraqi planes down. It’s a powerful memory that I still carry with me to this day. Ironically, the plane was built by America and supplied by the U.S. to Iraq. For me, it’s a strong symbol of the complicated history of the two countries that I love and their bizarre and complex relationship with one another.
HL: Also, in your interview with WOW x WOW, you say, “I’ve found that the more I look within, the better the work gets.” I really love that. Can you elaborate on where in your body your process starts, and how you get yourself to bring creative ideas to fruition and completion?
AF: As I get older, I let more and more of myself go into the work. A lot of the work is about me trying to figure out my place in this world with all its contradictions. When I became a father almost nine years ago, the work underwent a dramatic shift and became more personal. The stakes seemed higher, and every time I went to make a work, I thought about what my kid would think of it once he was an adult. My process these days is very intuitive. For instance, when I decided to do a show called A War on Wars, I was watching nonstop TV footage of war. I was thinking about my parents having a young kid during wartime and trying to figure out how to keep him safe. As a father, I was putting myself in their shoes. It was all I could think about, and the show was just an extension of my anxieties about the state of the world. It felt natural to make that work. For me, that’s the best way to work. I know myself better than anyone else, so looking within is where I start. The trick is to try to make something deeply personal that has a broader meaning and connection to those who don’t know you. It’s something I’m constantly thinking about in the studio.
AMIR H. FALLAH received his BFA in Fine Art & Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art and his MFA in painting at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions across the United States and abroad. Selected solo exhibitions include The Fowler Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson; South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings, SD; Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR; San Diego ICA; and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland, KS.
In 2009, the artist was chosen to participate in the Ninth Sharjah Biennial. In 2015, Fallah received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. In 2019, Fallah’s painting Calling on The Past received the Northern Trust Purchase Prize at EXPO Chicago. In 2020, Fallah was awarded the COLA Individual Artist Fellowship and the Artadia grant. In addition, the artist had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, accompanied by a catalogue, and a year-long installation at the ICA San Jose.
The artist has works in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Miami; Albright Knox Museum, Buffalo; Deste Foundation For Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; Xiao Museum Of Contemporary Art, Rizhao, China; McEvoy Foundation For The Arts, San Francisco; Nerman Museum, Kansas City; SMART Museum of Art at the University of Chicago; Davis Museum, Massachusetts; The Microsoft Collection, Washington; Plattsburg State Art Museum, NY; Cerritos College Public Art Collection, CA; Los Angeles County Department of Arts & Culture, CA; and Salsali Private Museum, Dubai, UAE.
HALEY LANINGHAM is a PhD candidate in Poetry at Florida State University. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and acts as Art Editor for Southeast Review.
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