Shahpour Pouyan: Skyhigh is my place

Realised specifically for the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens (MDD) in Deurle, Belgium, “Skyhigh is my place” is the culmination of over two years of research and development by the Iranian artist Shahpour Pouyan. The exhibition is the first solo presentation of the artist in a Belgian public institution.

Pouyan was born in Isfahan in 1979, the year of the Iranian Revolution. “Skyhigh is my place” partially fills MDD’s main exhibition space with wheat and inverts a military control tower in its patio. By uniting these two elements, Pouyan summons the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

His father was an electronic engineer for jet fighters who took part in a collective effort to plant wheat at a military base near Isfahan. This short-lived farming operation stands for the many contradictions of the 1979 Revolution, where a technological obsession with airspace was combined with patriotic infatuations for rural land. “Skyhigh is my place” is the slogan of the Iranian Air Force since its founding in 1925. It is one of the few slogans that remained unchanged after the Revolution.