Ghasempor's work, Pain Series, Philadelphia, PA.
PAIN SERIES
My paintings are allegories of war’s pain and horror, using emotional and satirical language to show war as an instigating male power. My style is narrative, exaggerated, misshapen, and cartoonish, especially in depicting children, to show innocence in opposition to the evil around them. Also, the motifs, Broken Mehrab, pillars, and upside-down mosques symbolize the conflict and misinterpretation of religion.
I depict war as a woman who gives birth to the dying, paralyzed, orphaned, or otherwise brutalized, breeding through the centuries; a woman who is a mother to all who fight, die, and win; a life giver who also perpetuates the cycle of destruction. My research on war victims and my childhood memories of displacement in a war zone have given me a repertoire of stories to develop these themes. An Iraqi mother talked about her child - born with a tumor because of chemical explosions - who cries from pain day and night: “My child hates me for giving birth to her.” My paintings tell this horror and give voice to this mother.
I developed this series in 2017. In 2015, I started to compose poems in response to the horror of war in the Middle East and, later, social injustices in Myanmar. I started to materialize my poems by depicting them in soft pastels on wood panels, Children on War (Improvisation I, II 2015 & War 2015) series, they are in a USD permanent collection. Children on War was awarded a CURCS grant.
