Aileen Bahmanipour

Lives and works in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Artist statement

Bahmanipour's practice is currently centred on exploring contemporary forms of Iconoclasm. She defines Iconoclasm not to reject or negate the image but to redefine it. To do that, she challenges the figure/ground relations and questions how they identify each other through iconoclastic gestures. The ground of the image, through the history of image-making, has been always suppressed and hidden by the covering image. She is questioning if by vandalizing the image, the iconoclast could give an opportunity to the ground of the image to find a language, to become visible, and be part of the image. Her creative process is entangled with images, how and why we make them and interact with images. Since 2009 when the Iranian regime’s restrictions maximized on Internet filters, her practice became obsessed with the diagrammatic imagery that was available to her through limited access to information, perhaps because they were neutral and not political at all. She recycles diagrammatic imagery to make new circuits and patent files of non-functional systems that blur the border between productivity and waste. She transforms these diagrams into different visual forms of study in systematic non-functionality and stupidity. Using available imagery and through disturbing the pattern of already established representations, Bahmanipour searches for a new way of perceiving the image and ground of the image. She disturbs the seemingly known quality of images in her works and troubles...

Artwork