Esmael Bahrani

Esmaël Bahrani (b. 1978, Iran) is an Iranian artist who has lived and worked in France since 2015. Born in Tehran, he studied at the University of Art and Architecture in Tehran before turning away from academic conventions to pursue an independent artistic path. In the early 2000s, Bahrani discovered graffiti through Western publications and became one of the important figures of Iran’s underground urban art scene. Painting clandestinely at night in several Iranian cities, he developed a visual language that served as a form of protest against political oppression and restrictions on individual freedom. His works, often conceived as cries of resistance, reflect the tensions experienced by a generation seeking greater openness and personal expression. Alongside his street practice, Bahrani developed a highly distinctive studio work combining painting, drawing, spray paint, wax, scratching, and engraving techniques. His canvases frequently depict fragmented or distorted figures emerging from chaotic surfaces marked by symbols, inscriptions, and traces of violence. Military references, Persian numerals, graffiti marks, and primitive signs coexist within compositions that explore memory, repression, identity, and resilience. Bahrani first exhibited in Tehran in 2005 at Azad Art Gallery and gained wider recognition with a successful solo exhibition at Dastan Gallery in 2012. In 2007, he was invited by Hervé Di Rosa to participate in a group exhibition at the International Museum of Modest Arts (MIAM) in Sète. He was also the only Middle Eastern artist to participate in the exhibition TAG at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2009. Following increasing political pressure and threats in Iran, Bahrani moved permanently to France in 2015 after an invitation from the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. Since then, he has continued to develop his practice in France, where his work creates a dialogue between Eastern and Western cultures, ancestral myths and contemporary urban culture, outsider art and street art. Now based near Paris, Esmaël Bahrani continues to produce powerful and expressive works characterized by improvisation, physical engagement with the surface, and an intense emotional charge. His paintings preserve the traces of their own making through scratching, erasure, inscriptions, and scarification, transforming the canvas into both a witness and a participant in the creative process. His work has been exhibited throughout France and Europe and is represented by several galleries.