Kamrooz Aram: Domestic Compositions

Kamrooz Aram’s approach integrates sculpture, painting, and architecture, creating contexts in which cultural artefacts are reconsidered within a contemporary, living present. In the collage series “Variations on Turquoise Bowl” (2025), a photographic reproduction shows a turquoise ceramic bowl with a central lute player, surrounded by cloud-like vignettes drawn in freehand lines. The image is framed by a painted square bordered by a thin red pencil line, beyond which an open linen surface appears. A single colour is isolated from each reproduction, and the painted frame is matched to it. The painted border endures longer than the printed page, suggesting the vibrancy of the bowl and the fading of the broader colonial framework through which such objects circulate in museums. The series also nods to Josef Albers’ “Homage to the Square”, proposing a compact diagram of formal, chromatic, and cultural relations shaped by historical power structures.

In the wider exhibition, sculpture–painting hybrids activate the gallery’s walls and floors through scrims, pedestals, and spatial colour arrangements. The installation stages a dialogue with modernist histories often positioned against Eastern aesthetic traditions. Exposed seams of sheetrock and the pale tones of construction materials interact with works that hang, lean, or extend from the wall. A network of relational practices emerges, structured by colour, memory, and time. Each element maintains reciprocity within this system, suggesting forms of interdependence or kinship that animate the space.