"Bahram empowers the subjects and makes them anonymous...there is a complicity that only exists between Bahram and each subject, leaving viewers curious about their relationship." –Dorothy Santos, Art Practical
Farhad Bahram’s work revolves around the idea of ‘affirmative destruction’ and negating the peripheral relationship between medium and message. In his works, destructed medium appears as a cultural object that is not self-sufficient or merely related to the archeology of its existence but rather to the contingency of its reception within the space.
Bahram unpacks his installations and performances through presenting texts that are impotent of conveying their intended message; destructed photos that are depleted from the iconic value of an image; and bodies that are unable to introduce the real identity of individuals. Within this destructive space lies an important and affirmative sentiment, which is the main objective in Bahram’s work: the possibility of relocating the meaning from within the art object to the contingencies of the reception process.
His work has been exhibited internationally in more than 30 shows and exhibitions, including Gowanus Loft, Brooklyn, NY; Yerba Buena Center For the Arts, San Francisco, CA; Mission Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA; Reed College, Portland, OR; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene, OR; Asian Resource Gallery, Oakland, CA; Umpqua Valley Arts Center, Roseburg, OR; Siuslaw Public Library, Florence, OR; Plâtre et Moi Gallery, Paris, France; Laatikkomo, Jyväskylä, Finland; Aaran Gallery, Tehran, Iran; Fravahr Art Gallery, Tehran, Iran; Sazmanab Center for Contemporary Art, Tehran, Iran.
Bahram received an MFA in photography from University of Oregon in 2015.
...I centered the main trajectory of my work on examining the possibilities for transforming this determined correlation between medium and message into an ever-moving chain of relations with no fixed entities to hold onto. This effort introduces the communicative act as a subjective mechanism related to the inability of the addresser to fully express her intentions, but at the same time, her ability to enunciate a context for spontaneous realization. [LINK]
University of Oregon, School of Architecture and Allied Arts
May 13, 2013
He tweets in French, English, and Farsi. He’ll set up an empty chair in front of his own chair on a busy sidewalk just to see who stops by, documenting the results in photographs. His portfolio includes photographs of shopkeepers holding portraits of dead relatives; photo assemblages “created to raise suspicion”’; photographs gathered from dozens of artists and sold to benefit children with cancer, children in poverty, children in need of human rights protection. [LINK]
last update: August 2017
