LOS ANGELES — This city is neither a melting pot nor a salad. A cultural melting pot involves cultures mixing and merging into one, making them indistinguishable from each other. A cultural salad implies that the cultures remain distinct, while creating a singular whole which can be interesting because of the combination.
Los Angeles is more of a good stir-fry – mixing, merging, blending flavors and ingredients that maintain distinction while invariably changing. And like a good stir-fry, the recipe for being Angelene varies by family.
Los Angeles artist Amir H. Fallah, who arrived in the city via Tehran and then Turkey, understands this deeply. In “Cowgirl,” a large circular painting that contains the eponymous figure, Fallah combines a range of symbologies in a stir that both evokes the city and a challenge to what the city represents.
“For the artist,” explains the exhibit text, “the flourishing flora around the perimeter of this tondo serves as a metaphor for the American promise of fertile soil and opportunity for all.” Alongside the anime-looking cowgirl, a Black Panther logo, a traditional West Asian or South Asian figure, and a golden horse come together, challenging the cowgirl’s idyllic promise. The work is in the style of a tondo, or Flemish garland painting, which usually contains a portrait within the frame. Fallah left it pristine turquoise.
The Fallacy of Borderson view at the UCLA Fowler Museum through May 14, is the artist’s first solo exhibition, whose bold and luminous paintings, sculptures and stained glass communicate a rich array of cultures, perspectives and influences, all shaped by the many diasporas that shape Los Angeles, alongside his own cultural heritage as Iranian-American.
The show is organized by major themes: New Worlds | Old Worlds; Sculptures; portrait; Allegory; Autobiography and Canvas | Stained glass; and Objects | Memories. The thematic arrangement helps us filter the works through the perspective of major influences in Fallah’s life. In the Portraiture section, for example, we see his interest in the primacy of objects and gestures in the formation of identity. If his tondos challenge the idea of centrality implicit in a circle, his series of portraits challenges the idea that a subject should be identifiable by their face.
In “Life”, a character under a cloth holds a gray heart, its valves and chambers exposed, and in “Be Still”, another character holds its hands in the dharmachakra mudra, or teaching mudra. The characters’ arms are respectively yellow and purple, their faces hidden under colorful prints. Race, gender, class, and other markers fade, as Fallah instead represents his subjects through the objects around them, after meeting with the sitters to discuss what is important to them. The Autobiography section offers an overview of the artist’s immigration journey. His painting “No Gods No Masters” includes depictions of Middle Eastern stereotypes, such as Aladdin on a flying carpet, and a Nosferatu-like specter behind a 1920s flapper in a red dress.
His monumental work ‘Break Down the Walls’ contains a litany of symbols and images that speak to the title of the show, depicting the struggles of immigration, particularly in a hostile environment. “I made this sketch,” Fallah explained in the audio of the exhibit, “during the last year of the Trump presidency. Watching the news, I was devastated by what was going on at the US-Mexico border. It reminded him of his own experience coming to the United States, and he wondered how his life might have turned out differently if his and his family’s access had been similarly denied. title of the work refers to the music by hardcore band Youth of Todaywhose themes of immigration continue to inform his politics.
A keyhole in the center opens to an alternate life: a dove represents messages, angels reflect good and evil, and a traveler gazes into the distance. Fallah calls them symbols, but to me they also read as archetypes, connecting the modern experience of immigration to ancient experiences of wandering, nomadism, migration and loss. “These symbols represent the complex situations that all countries face around the issue of immigration,” he noted of his painting. “Who is allowed in and who is kept out. Who is safe and who is in danger. And above all, who decides. »
Scattered throughout the exhibition are sculptures, each made of hand-painted aluminum sheets. They continue the visual themes of the paintings, with cutouts that represent various organs. From a distance, and even up close, they look more delicate, as if they were made of cardboard rather than metal. They are complemented by the magnificent stained glass windows he developed with Judson Studios, established in 1897 in Los Angeles and the oldest stained glass workshop in the country. The textures of the sculptural and glass works bring the bold color choices and iconography of Fallah’s art to life.
To complete the show, a series of covers of Beautiful/Rot, an art and design magazine that Fallah led as editor and creative director while completing his MFA at UCLA. Courtesy of long-time collaborator photographer Fubz, the magazine covers showcase the artist’s interests and creativity, along with a selection of Beautiful/Rot Hoodies from artists and galleries like Aya Kato and Deitch Projects reflect the bold pop of the moment.
“Beauty and decadence” is perhaps the best way to describe the yin and yang of Amir H. Fallah’s work. Aesthetically speaking, his pieces are lavish, beautiful and inspiring, bringing to life the symbols and subjects he chooses to paint. But the themes he explores reflect a dark side, a breakdown of borders, trust and stability that comes with the trauma of immigration and of existing in a country where the culture of rhetoric and violence against immigrants grows.
In “Protector 1”, a masked figure holds what looks like an Egyptian bust, and in the distance a woodcut-style Japanese print depicts another figure looking down from a cliff onto the water. According to the exhibition text, the painting deals with the drawbacks of cultural preservation, which so often involves taking the cultural heritage of one country in order to showcase it in another. But in the context of this show and its themes, I tend to see it another way: as an immigrant who clings to whatever piece of the past he can, knowing that too. could one day be taken from him.
Amir H. Fallah: The Fallacy of Borders continues at the Fowler Museum (308 Charles E. Young Drive North, Westwood, Los Angeles) through May 14. The exhibit was curated by Amy Landau, Director of Education and Interpretation at the Fowler Museum.
