Perfect Strangers

Much like a historian or ethnographer, Fallah works with a diverse mix of local communities and groups to collect material evidence of their private and public lives and transform them into artworks. Portraits are composed using objects and textiles the subjects deem significant, to develop an exploration of the ways that identities are formed out of emotional associations with–and nostalgia for–specific products, objects, and places. Perfect Strangers re-interprets and gives new weight to everyday objects as active participants in the construction of self-identification. Fallah’s compositions, both fluid and fragmented, embrace the moments when things do not quite align, and gives the work a sense of honesty that reveals the complex factors of identity which cannot be expressed through a simple corporeal rendering. Inviting the community and its objects into the Artist Lab, Fallah articulates a sense of regional identity that is ambiguous, yet informed by the perspective of an international artist who calls the Los Angeles metro area home.

Amir H. Fallah was born in Tehran, Iran in 1979. He received his BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2001 and his MFA from UCLA in 2005. Fallah will open a solo exhibition of new work, From Primitive to Present, at Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles in March 2015. Recent solo shows include Between the Folds, Joyce Gallery, Hong Kong, 2014; and The Collected at Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco, and Third Line, Dubai, 2013. His work was featured at Frieze Art Fair in 2014 and in the Ninth Sharjah Biennial in 2009.

Amir H. Fallah’s Artist Lab Residency at 18th Street Arts Center is generously supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.