Aileen Bahmanipour’s work deals with contemporary iconoclasm – a concept that she understands not as the pure destruction of images, but as a radical redefinition of their meaning and function. Traditionally, iconoclasm refers to the deliberate destruction or rejection of images, usually for political or religious reasons. In a contemporary context, the artist uses this strategy to rethink images and their hidden stories and make them visible. By destroying or alienating traditional representations, she exposes hidden layers and encourages a critical examination of power structures, perception and truth.
At the center of her work is the question of how the relationship between figure and narrative can be transformed: Can the destruction of an image expose its hidden background and thereby make it “capable of speech”? Historically, what lies behind an image has often been concealed or suppressed by the image itself. Aileen Bahmanipour’s iconoclastic gestures attempt to reverse this relationship. Her artistic approach emphasizes “not seeing” as a conscious political act that challenges perception and reveals its mechanisms.
The artist understands iconoclasm as a means of social upheaval – a visible sign of the shift in power from the dominant image figure to the image surface as an independent carrier of meaning. By disrupting and deconstructing established visual codes, she blurs the boundaries between seeing and knowing. In doing so, Aileen Bahmanipour combines Western and Eastern visual traditions and criticizes the prevailing classical perspectives. Her aim is an anti-perspective viewpoint that enables an immediate, clearer relationship between image and truth.