Fidelity; “We” to the Extent of Politics

Amirhossein Bayani
June 10  —  June 24, 2022
-1 × Underground

In the final part of his “Fidelity” trilogy entitled ‘“We” to the Extent of Politics,’ Amirhossein Bayani explores the boundaries and thresholds of the impossible; something that has been a gleam of hope throughout history, yet actualized only in very few cases. Amirhossein considers the concepts of politics and authority with an implicit, poetic approach. He takes the concept of truth as being faithful to an event, and, in this final part, which concludes the two previous series, i.e., “Names of Politics” and “Numbers of Politics,” he depicts the moment in which the numbers and names of politics converge.

In the first series, Amirhossein examines politics as a realm of names and presents his imaginary picture of the life and death of certain people. In the second series, he depicts the general condition of a recurring situation: humans lose their lives and are reduced to numbers without their names being remembered. ‘“We” to the Extend of Politics’ is a place where the names and the numbers form a word called “we,” which, in the general sense of politics, can form a new political concept, continue it, or make it void of meaning.

Adapted to the current situation and more isolated than before, Amirhossein does not present titles or statement for the works, leaving the judgment to the audience who are in the same situation as the artist. By transforming human characters into personal symbols in the present series, he creates works that are closer to the tradition of landscape painting. It is as if he desperately abandons common words and equations to depict our present and future circumstances with an unpretentious language. In this third and final act of the play, which can only be read along with the previous two series, he depicts a situation in which it is not clear whether after the moment of convergence in which the event came to pass, the names and numbers are moving towards destruction or triumph.

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