The Narrative of Minorities

Millie Walton

Vast mountainscapes, dense forests and winding rivers are painted onto wooden surfaces cut into

uniform shapes that resemble a simple house structure, simultaneously holding and restricting

the landscape. They are memories of Iranian artist Amirhossein Bayani’s homeland,

psychological states, compressed emotions. The Narrative of Minorities, Bayani’s first solo

exhibition at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, draws on his diasporic experiences, on the complex

and ongoing journey to build a home.

At a first glance, the landscapes Bayani paints seem almost paradisal, bursting with colour and

life, but there is also an eeriness to the scenes. In the forest, 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

while elsewhere clouds and low hanging fog obscure or fragment the image. These visual

barriers become symbolic for the immigrant’s struggle to envision a future when their life is

ruptured by uncertainty and a feeling of precariousness. Within some of these landscapes are

small structures – a tower of bricks, a concrete triangle – suggestive of failed or lost settlements,

of displacement and obstruction.

Each composition draws on Bayani’s own personal experiences and emotions, but they have a

far wider resonance within the context of recent and ongoing geopolitical events that have placed

countless lives under risk. Within this context, the painting of the mountain at sunset becomes

particularly poignant. This is Damavand, a mountain that in Iran is a symbol of salvation and

resistance, the image of which Bayani finds himself continually returning to. The structure at the

foot of the mountain is a visualisation of the memory he carries with him, but dwarfed in

comparison to the real thing, its small, fragile form speaks to the limits of memory and the

inability to fully reconstruct what has been left behind.

As these works acknowledge, there is a certain naivety in the idea of making a home in an

unfamiliar place, but that naivety is also bound up with hope. The repeated house-like shapes of

Bayani’s wooden panels articulate both desperation and determination. At the same time, they

possess an almost shrine-like presence: they are keepsakes and dreams, a prayer for the future.

For Bayani, these paintings are not simply about longing, but about survival. They speak to the

reality of people forced to leave their homes due to political conditions beyond their control, to

the emotional labour of beginning again in unfamiliar terrain. And yet, amid the density and

disorientation, they also hold space for resistance – for remembering, rebuilding and imagining

new ways to belong.