Bahmanipour, Aileen

Lives in Vancouver, BC

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
distinguishing the image from its ground. By situating herself in the existing hybrid dialogues
between Western and Eastern perspectives, she attempts to challenge the very idea of
perspectives in order to reach an anti-perspectival point of view, from which the subject’s
understanding of the image and the truth behind the image’s appearance can possibly construct
a transparent relationship.