Backsplash
Add Custom Frame
Frames ship to U.S. addresses only. Framed prints ship in 2–4 weeks and are final sale. Full framing details
Add Custom Frame
Frames ship to U.S. addresses only. Framed prints ship in 2–4 weeks and are final sale. Full framing details
Add Custom Frame
Frames ship to U.S. addresses only. Framed prints ship in 2–4 weeks and are final sale. Full framing details
My paintings are rich with Persian art influences: Iran's ceramic traditions and its patterned, jewel-like art. But I follow my own personal vocabulary of images. I use pattern expressively, to evoke circumstances that are out of control. Cartoonish, art brut aspects of my work stand in opposition to its complex, jewel-like qualities. Through a visual tension of opposites, I found a language for the painful contradiction between Iran's reputation as brutal menace, and its exquisite contributions to world culture.
Backsplash features a fantastical, melting cityscape that resembles a hybrid of Iran's ornate mosques and a power plant. This meltdown satirizes the Iranian regime's flamboyant failure on the world stage. Cartoonishly spreading towards a miniature Manhattan, it also satirizes Islamophobia and fears of a nuclear Iran. The green counter-wave, brimming with defiant faces and limbs, is a metaphor for the imperiled protestors against Iran's theocratic regime. Backsplash is an expressive re-telling of a geo- political mess, mixed with angst, critique, and humor.
Backsplash is in the collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT.
Negar Ahkami is a mixed media artist and painter who was born in Baltimore and raised in the New York area. Ahkami received a B.A. from Columbia University and an MFA from School of Visual Arts. She has had solo exhibitions in New York at Leila Heller Gallery and LMAK Projects, and in the DC area at Marymount University's Cody Gallery and Arlington Arts Center. Her work has featured in group exhibitions at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Walters Art Museum, the North Carolina Museum of Art, The Bronx Museum of Art, the Queens Museum of Art, and other venues. Ahkami’s work is represented in the collections of The New Britain Museum of American Art, the DePaul University Art Museum, the Farjam Collection (UAE), and private and corporate collections, national and international. She currently lives in the DC area, where she is participating in a Longterm Artist Residency at Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, VA.