Aileen Bahmanipour’s work engages with contemporary iconoclasm—not as the mere destruction of images, but as a radical redefinition of their meaning and function. Traditionally, iconoclasm refers to the deliberate destruction or rejection of images, often driven by political or religious motives. In a contemporary context, the artist adopts this strategy to rethink and reveal the hidden histories embedded in images. By disrupting or dismantling conventional visual representations, she uncovers underlying layers and invites a critical examination of power structures, perception, and truth.
At the heart of her practice lies the question of how the figure/ground relationships can be transformed: Can the destruction of an image expose its hidden ground and make it “speak”? Historically, what lies behind an image has often been concealed or suppressed by the image itself. Aileen Bahmanipour’s iconoclastic gestures aim to reverse this dynamic. Her approach highlights “not-seeing” as a deliberate political act—one that challenges how and what we perceive, and brings to light the mechanisms behind our ways of seeing.
The artist views iconoclasm as a tool of social transformation—a visible sign of shifting power from dominant pictorial figures to the surface of the image as an autonomous bearer of meaning. By disrupting and deconstructing established visual codes, she blurs the boundaries between seeing and knowing. In doing so, Aileen Bahmanipour bridges Western and Eastern visual traditions, critiques classical notions of perspective, and proposes an anti-perspectival approach—one that seeks a more direct and transparent relationship between image and truth.