Possibilities of being

We are witnessing the radical destabilization of life on earth, imploding economies, epic refugee crisis, the catastrophic pandemic, and so on. Although it seems that all these emergencies must be addressed in political realm, a prior philosophical change into our perspective towards the universe is pivotal to our transformation from passive observers to politically involved citizens of the world.

I believe that any change in human condition, initially needs a prior transformation of our interpretation of “being”. In other words, world-change presupposes a change of world-conception, and it demands a reconsideration of the way which we stand in the world. As Nietzsche once adeptly said, what we need is a “revolution of values”. This is where art can act as the vanguard of the revolution of the mind. To me, art is an ontological inquiry that poses the question of the very idea of being. Through the work of art, both artist and the viewer can interpret the world in an intuitive manner and are capable to imagine the potential ways of life through a genuine independence of thought.

The effort through my artworks is to create a visual narrative around the concept of being, to pose ontological questions on the meaning of existence and to explore the complex nuances of the human condition. I defamiliarize ordinary objects and events of everyday life to create a surreal world that metaphorically qustions the consept of being. I juxtapose nature and technology, freedom and restraint, the individual and society, human and alien, sanity and insanity, morality and deviance into unexpected and unfamiliar compositions to convey the deep complexity and truth of the impalpable connections and hidden phenomena of life which are indiscernible to us because of the way we live in the world.

The arrangement of the heterogenous elements and motifs into the places of everyday life forms a mysterious space between the real and the imaginary. The visual elements of these works, from faceless figures and apocalyptic sceneries to high contrast saturated colors, all are combined in a way to help the viewer to keep a distance from the "real world" and drag them into an inner world which is unknown to us. These compositions all represent the absence of individual identity and implicate on the ambivalent sense of alienation. They create a feeling of living in Heterotopia, where everything seems to be lost. However, they simultaneously offer the opportunity for the viewers to take a fresh look, from the ground up, at what it really means to be human.

I attempt to compose my pictures in a way to reduce the gap between the viewer and the context. I place the viewer at the focal viewpoint of the composition to bring them into the context, and then offering them a vantage point from which they can critically observe the story that is happening in there. I would like to give my viewer a pause for thought, bring them back from the chaos of the outside world to the dormant sources of our existence as humans. This is an invitation to a poetic engagement with the world.

Ali Fakharian