THE SEASON OF RUIN'S REMEMBRANCE

Written by: Millie Walton

 Canoes floating past abandoned settlements, archways half submerged within the

sea, miniature figures lost within dense forests.

Iranian artist Amirhossein

Bayani’s vividly colored and highly detailed paintings explore themes around

immigration, protest and freedom with a particular focus on the struggles of

women. Working in the tradition of landscape painting, his latest series The Season

of Ruin’s Remembrance (Testimony of Eyewitnesses of the Truth) and Requiem for

the Years Past employ natural elements both as a way of expressing complex

emotional states and envisioning a more harmonious future.

Each of the paintings in the series The Season of Ruin’s Remembrance (Testimony

of Eyewitnesses of the Truth) was inspired by a real-life story of an Iranian woman

who fought for freedom and lost her life. Rather than illustrating their heroic and

tragic tales, however, Bayani envisions these figures in other-worldly forest

settings: they appear memorialized as statues or else as tiny, translucent spirits,

glimpsed between the trees, standing on a rock or on the edge of a lake. At a first

glance, these landscapes may seem to be paradisal, bursting with color and life,

but there is also an eeriness to the scenes: the shades of green are vivid to the point

of being luminous, the foliage so dense it creates a kind of wall, blocking out the

light. In two of the paintings, watery drips of red paint run down the canvas,

symbolic of the blood shed not just in Iran but in conflicts across the globe. ‘This

tension between beauty and horror, for me, describes the struggle for

emancipation,’ says Bayani. ‘It all depends on your perspective.’

The same bloody marks appear in the series Requiem for the Years Past, once

again complicating the beauty of the natural landscapes and staining the walls of

the buildings that sit on the banks of the river. These paintings are dedicated to

Mohammad Moradi, an Iranian man who drowned himself in the Rhone river to

raise awareness around the continued oppression of Iranian women, and his wife

who he left behind but also to all those who have been forced to flee their homes

due to war or economic, social or political hardships. In the compositions, we

encounter women in canoes floating to their freedom, but they are alone and as the

blood stains and falling black roses in Canoe #4 suggest, unable to shake the

memories of their home or the struggles they have experienced. And yet, these are

also scenes filled with hope. In Canoe #3 and Canoe #5 blooming patches of pink

roses appear as symbols of femininity and growth while two untitled paintings

depicting archways standing in water evoke the idea of new beginnings.

As Bayani notes, ‘As an artist from the Middle East, the concept of liberation often

seems distant and unattainable. Yet, when I look at nature, I am able to imagine a

future in which there is peace.’

London- Winter 2024