Bahman Dadkhah (Iranian, b. 1941)

The acclaimed ‘Otages’ series created by Bahman Dadkhah is his most famous and personal accounts of the artist’s oeuvre, conceived in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution. The molds of this series were taken out of Iran with the assistance of the French consulate at that time, and were later on casted in France. Dadkhah’s sculptures are a testimony to the suffering and fear caused from the suppression lived in Iran before the revolution, materializing into a harsh figure firmly grounded in its bronze casting and seated within extremely tight proportions. In the present work, the emaciated prisoner’s body is warped and blindfolded, disfigured and entangled. Capturing the psychological anguish of the time, the seated prisoner is contorted, its face is not visible and its body is held within an intimate and tightly constricted scale. This sculpture is an overwhelmingly powerful emblem of its time, casted with rigid and severe textures and captivating the dehumanization and torment felt in Iran in the 1970s.

Emigrating from Iran to Paris in 1984, Dadkhah was inspired by post-war French Avant Garde artists, especially in the figurative sculptors of the early 20th century. His aesthetic and exploration of existential concepts is likened to that of Alberto Giacommeti, noted between the similar slender emaciated figures and the subject’s real presence felt within society.