Ali Banisadr
Ali Banisadr is a contemporary artist who currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He was born in Tehran, Iran in 1976. Banisadr’s densely populated paintings are influenced by his experience of synesthesia, linking color and form. Drawing on childhood experiences of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) in his native Tehran, where explosions and other aural disturbances were commonplace, Banisadr painstakingly and intuitively builds complex compositions that exude a vitality at once turbulent and celebratory.
Painting stops time. It holds a moment still, suspends narrative, and creates space for thought. In the works of Nicolas Poussin, this temporal suspension becomes not only a tool for formal clarity but a mode of philosophical inquiry.
I was born in the mid-1970s in Iran, a period marked by significant upheaval. Few artists from my generation have experienced such prolonged periods of war. At the age of four, I witnessed a revolution followed by eight years of brutal conflict. This tumultuous backdrop profoundly shaped my worldview and artistic sensibilities.
