Canoe No. 1 by Amirhossein Bayani – Limited Edition Print

Canoe No. 1 by Amirhossein Bayani

Amirhossein Bayani’s vividly coloured and highly detailed works explore themes around life, immigration, and freedom with a particular focus on the struggles of women. Working in the tradition of landscape works, his latest series The Season of Ruin’s Remembrance employs natural elements both as a way of expressing complex emotional states and envisioning a more harmonious future.

Each of the works in the series The Season of Ruin’s Remembrance was inspired by a real-life story of a 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 memorialised as statues or else as tiny, translucent spirits, glimpsed between the trees, standing on a rock or on the edge of a lake.

At first glance, these landscapes may seem to be paradisal, bursting with colour 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 this particular composition, we encounter women in canoes floating to their freedom. Still, they are alone, unable to shake the memories of their home or the struggles they have experienced. And yet, these are also scenes filled with hope. 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.’