Hiroo Onoda is the hero of Amir Hossein Zanjani’s current exhibition at Salsali Private Museum.
Onoda was an Imperial Japanese Army Intelligence officer who did not surrender in 1945 when World War Two ended. Instead, he emerged from the Philippine jungles in 1974 and was only relieved of his duties once his commanding officer personally travelled to tell him.
Although he died in January this year, Zanjani has immortalised Onoda in a colourful painting as the ultimate symbol of submission to power.
“He was a true soldier, a military man to the core,” says Ramin Salsali the owner of the museum. “He is the ideal person to represent what this exhibition talks about.”
All the paintings are based on real people, recreated from photographs and videos that Zanjani found throughout his research.
The starting point of the show was the military march and how, in countries where dictators rule, they use the army to indirectly suppress the people by giving them the impression that they are the ultimate power.
Along the back wall of SPM are some 650 portraits of real men and women from the UN member states arranged like a jigsaw puzzle, visual examples of the impression of power.
The rest of the gallery-cum-musuem shows scenes from Communist nations like Russia and North Korea and to what extremes people will go to when submitting to a power.
“Other than the sociological and philopshical entry points to the exhibition,” says Zanjani, “the other way we can visit the show is through semiology. When you convert a real photograph or a document to a painting you are making something every day become iconic.”
The key piece, perhaps, is The Trampoline. An installation that depicts the map of the world stretched out in the same manner that a leather tanner would stretch a skin. At its base hang many crudely formed medals made from bottle caps, which represent the awards that we get for submission to power.
“In this one we have killed the world and skinned it and then weighed it down with medallions,” says Salsali.
In the show, Zanjani has presented us with many more narratives and starting points for discussion as well as the swirling bright colours purposely chosen for their opposition to the military pantones.
“I grew up surrounded by war and I have been working for a long time to show a different side to it,” Zanjani explains. We think he has succeeded.
* Amir Hossein Zanjani's solo show runs until August at Salsali Private Museum
* Full interview will follow at a later date in The National
