Using the visual vocabulary of Persian miniature painting, South Asian truck ornamentation, and digital glitch imagery, Iman Raad creates both intimate and large-scale work that addresses humankind's anxieties about existence by staging scenes that feature disturbances in reality. In his Still Lives series, Raad creates ruptures in space / time using a two-fold strategy; by depicting gravitational impossibilities but also by using traditional materials and subject matter â egg-tempera and iconography borrowed from Persian miniatures, respectively â to render the hyper-contemporary language of digital glitches found in stalled internet browsers or retouching software. Raad's subjects are inanimate but anthropomorphic; decorative objects previously relegated to passive kitsch flicker to life with vibrant agency. By inverting the art historical narrative of ornament as a subordinate feature, Raad creates freedom to explore the subjectivity of being.
