Wahed Khakdan’s individual experience of the homeland, tightly bound to drama and storytelling, has been reflected in his complex, hyperrealistic paintings. A reflective yearning for the past is manifested in his deeply nostalgic approach to a lost utopia, while his transnational situation has led to the assimilation of Western traditional painting devices. Accumulation, immobility, and restricted space mark his compositions.

The symbolism of Khakdan’s iconography can be thus cultural or individual. Some objects are further associated with a certain individual memory, like the iron, carrying the memory of a friend having been tortured by Iron in Prison. Direct hints to drama, art, and fantasy are frequently recognizable through puppets and painting frames. Severe longing for home and endeavor to preserve every piece of memory is unmistakable, even in the artist’s painstaking reconstruction of every particle of dirt and dust.

Helia Darabi