Untitled

2022 - Painting (Painting)

40 x 60 cm

Tirdad Hashemi

---

This untitled painting by Tirdad Hasemi presents a space that can be thought of as both a prison cell and a house. Paradoxically, in both cases the color and the importance of the walls give a feeling of confinement. Escaping from prison in Iran and finding the walls of a home in Europe has been a complex and conflicting experience for Hashemi. When they arrived in Berlin, they lived in a communal apartment which, over time, became a place where conflicts arose. However, this is one of the ways in which they can create links with the new context in which they have arrived. On the right side of the painting, Hashemi depicts a pile of suitcases that remind us of their travels in different European cities. The size of the painting is itself a sign of the nomadic life they have led for several years. It is also a way to reinforce the idea of oppressive confinement.

---

Leaving Iran in 2017, Tirdad Hashemi now cultivates perpetual movement, between their hometown of Tehran, Istanbul, Paris, and Berlin. They started painting in order to express things that cannot be formulated verbally. Hashemi’s representations are based on everyday life, their own, and that of their friends in exile. They have chosen the medium of drawing or small format paintings in order to be able to create wherever they are without any material constraints. Hashemi’s work expresses the singularity and the harshness of their mutable lifestyle. Emotional and political stories overlap in their works that give form to depression, the homesickness of their exiled friends, and melancholy. For Hashemi, intimacy is a collective matter, meant to be shared. They have made incompleteness a modality of their style, their drawings often being sketched quickly and as if left to their own fate. Hashemi’s practice has since expanded to include hands other than their own; while in residence at the B.L.O. studio in Berlin, they began collaborating with Soufia Erfanian.

---

Colors:

---

• emotion.n.01
• depression.n.01
• domestic.a.02
• supplanting.n.01
• migration.n.01