No Man is an Island: Mohammad Barrangi at b-side Festival 2024 and beyond
Featured in festivals and exhibitions opening soon, we focus on the community-focused works of multi-hyphenate artist Mohammad Barrangi...
September 17, 2024
Movement permeates Mohammad Barrangi’s lives. Born in Rasht in 1988, he first pursued graphic design and book illustration in Iran’s leading educational institutions - there, though, he remains best known for his first profession, as a Paralympic runner. Relocating to Yorkshire in 2017, he has since enjoyed major exhibitions in places like The Art House in Wakefield and Edinburgh Printmakers; in 2022, both print-specialists made welcome homes for the artist, who brings together ‘traditional’ Persian calligraphy and iconography, historic European scientific illustrations, and experimental techniques in his work.
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Barrangi’s lines on paper often translate across media, into large-scale murals, installations, and sound works. Extending his work in three-dimensional sculpture, first developed and exhibited in Wakefield, his most recent exhibition in Leeds told a fantastical story of a young girl called Lily, setting sail in a small boat from Anzali, a city on the Caspian Sea in northern Iran, to northern England. In the city where Barrangi is based, the tale was taken as neatly autobiographical; but the experiences and motivations of such migrations are, always, particular and more complex. Barrangi did not migrate in a small boat, but did endure other, connected challenges in the two years it took to ‘achieve’ the status of asylum seeker, including political detention. Still – or so - he maintains a positive approach to his personal life and artistic practice, a stated commitment to transform what may seem like adversities into possibilities.
A new body of work sits at the core of b-side Festival 2024, an annual celebration of contemporary art commissioned and produced in response to the Isle of Portland in Dorset. It is part of the organisation’s year-round Common Lands programme, which uses the island as a microcosm to explore relationships to and with lands ‘here and elsewhere’ - a project inspired by a collaboration with photographer Farhad Berahman (like Barrangi, Iranian-born and UK-based). Artists, researchers, and residents are afforded ample space to navigate these interconnected physical, environmental, and human contexts, of sustainable tourism and coastal erosion, land ownership and displacement, homogeneous communities and biodiversity.
Though yet to present or work in the South West, Barrangi considers themes clearly relevant to audiences in the region. Nor are such collaborations new to his practice; his association with The Art House started as part of their Studio of Sanctuary residency programme, which supports artists who are refugees and asylum seekers to continue to work. Beyond the legacy of Berahman, it is the audio works that linger in the memories of islanders and regulars to festivals past. Barrangi was joined at b side 2024 by Dhaqan Collective, presenting their nomadic House of Weaving Songs, a multisensory tribute to Somali heritage in the face of climate crises. With the support of the Counterpoints Arts – the producers of festivals including Refugee Week, who first brought Berahman to b-side’s attention - their work will continue to travel from Bristol to London and, soon, the Eden Project in Cornwall.
Barrangi too brings together stories from really-existing exiles, and mythological figures both from Iran and local to the island. In a mural along the seawall of Quiddles Cafés, the artist crops, repeats, and scales up fragments of found images; at Chiswell Community Garden, he adds the first in a series of works referencing royalty, which also extends to the sculptural representation of human figures with limb difference. (Whilst present in Portland throughout the weekend Festival, the artist admitted his attention was sometimes distracted by the Summer Paralympic Games simultaneously closing in Paris.)
A stone’s throw from the English Channel, the waterfront location creates space for more subtle interpretations than the ubiquitous ‘dream’ of his exhibition titles. Barrangi collages place, time and memory, adding a deceptive look of history, by fading the printed vinyl before layering atop the Portland stone. With his ambiguous bodies, often represented with lost or missing arms and legs, we might speculate the othering of those journeying to Britain’s shores – and simultaneously, share in the artist’s positive outlook onto the horizon.
This series could as well make a permanent home at Portland Bill Lighthouse, the architectural motif which recurs most frequently in Barrangi’s work - and may provide opportunities for more in the region. One Night, One Dream, Life in the Lighthouse was part of Smeaton300, a programme to commemorate the Leeds-born – and likely the UK’s first - civil engineer, John Smeaton. Constructed in 1759, and renamed in 1882, Smeaton’s Tower on Plymouth Hoe likewise attracts visitors local and global; though a property of The Box, the city’s museum and art gallery, it has yet to be integrated within its contemporary arts landscape.
.jpeg)
Plymouth, like Portland, could prove an interesting context for Barrangi, as he explores new locations for his site-specific work. With its history as a former colonial seaport, and contemporary status as a so-called ‘Dispersal City’, it is home to a predominantly white, working-class population, and growing migrant and refugee community. Portland has also served as a home for almost 600 temporary residents from the Bibby Stockholm. The Island’s intentions, though, are longer-term; though Barrangi’s sculpture leaves for his forthcoming exhibition in Nottingham, his murals remain, a continued presence on - and for - Portland. Visiting artists of different backgrounds also have expressed a sense of welcome, unsettling their stereotypes of working in rural regions, and the often extractive nature of cultural tourism.
Arts organisations should take note of b-side, and its careful, considered approach. Rocca Holly-Nambi and Sally Watkins, Director and Curator respectively, remark upon the Festival’s almost incidental concerns of migration, climate crises, and disability - themes which can be developed though collaboration with more activist, ‘strategic partners’ like Counterpoints Arts, and in different contexts. Informed by their work across contexts, Barrangi’s Nottingham exhibition will emphasise the impact of climate change on native animals and communities in southern Iran. Critically, though, these lived experiences might inform, but must not be used to define, either artist or audiences. Barrangi’s dreams, limitless in their scope, are a reminder.
Mohammad Barrangi: Dream of the Sea opens at b-side Festival 2024 in Portland in September 2024.
Mohammad Barrangi: The Last Rain in Wonderland is on view at New Art Exchange in Nottingham from 19 October 2024.
Movement permeates Mohammad Barrangi’s lives. Born in Rasht in 1988, he first pursued graphic design and book illustration in Iran’s leading educational institutions - there, though, he remains best known for his first profession, as a Paralympic runner. Relocating to Yorkshire in 2017, he has since enjoyed major exhibitions in places like The Art House in Wakefield and Edinburgh Printmakers; in 2022, both print-specialists made welcome homes for the artist, who brings together ‘traditional’ Persian calligraphy and iconography, historic European scientific illustrations, and experimental techniques in his work.
Barrangi’s lines on paper often translate across media, into large-scale murals, installations, and sound works. Extending his work in three-dimensional sculpture, first developed and exhibited in Wakefield, his most recent exhibition in Leeds told a fantastical story of a young girl called Lily, setting sail in a small boat from Anzali, a city on the Caspian Sea in northern Iran, to northern England. In the city where Barrangi is based, the tale was taken as neatly autobiographical; but the experiences and motivations of such migrations are, always, particular and more complex. Barrangi did not migrate in a small boat, but did endure other, connected challenges in the two years it took to ‘achieve’ the status of asylum seeker, including political detention. Still – or so - he maintains a positive approach to his personal life and artistic practice, a stated commitment to transform what may seem like adversities into possibilities.
A new body of work sits at the core of b-side Festival 2024, an annual celebration of contemporary art commissioned and produced in response to the Isle of Portland in Dorset. It is part of the organisation’s year-round Common Lands programme, which uses the island as a microcosm to explore relationships to and with lands ‘here and elsewhere’ - a project inspired by a collaboration with photographer Farhad Berahman (like Barrangi, Iranian-born and UK-based). Artists, researchers, and residents are afforded ample space to navigate these interconnected physical, environmental, and human contexts, of sustainable tourism and coastal erosion, land ownership and displacement, homogeneous communities and biodiversity.
Though yet to present or work in the South West, Barrangi considers themes clearly relevant to audiences in the region. Nor are such collaborations new to his practice; his association with The Art House started as part of their Studio of Sanctuary residency programme, which supports artists who are refugees and asylum seekers to continue to work. Beyond the legacy of Berahman, it is the audio works that linger in the memories of islanders and regulars to festivals past. Barrangi was joined at b side 2024 by Dhaqan Collective, presenting their nomadic House of Weaving Songs, a multisensory tribute to Somali heritage in the face of climate crises. With the support of the Counterpoints Arts – the producers of festivals including Refugee Week, who first brought Berahman to b-side’s attention - their work will continue to travel from Bristol to London and, soon, the Eden Project in Cornwall.
Barrangi too brings together stories from really-existing exiles, and mythological figures both from Iran and local to the island. In a mural along the seawall of Quiddles Cafés, the artist crops, repeats, and scales up fragments of found images; at Chiswell Community Garden, he adds the first in a series of works referencing royalty, which also extends to the sculptural representation of human figures with limb difference. (Whilst present in Portland throughout the weekend Festival, the artist admitted his attention was sometimes distracted by the Summer Paralympic Games simultaneously closing in Paris.)
A stone’s throw from the English Channel, the waterfront location creates space for more subtle interpretations than the ubiquitous ‘dream’ of his exhibition titles. Barrangi collages place, time and memory, adding a deceptive look of history, by fading the printed vinyl before layering atop the Portland stone. With his ambiguous bodies, often represented with lost or missing arms and legs, we might speculate the othering of those journeying to Britain’s shores – and simultaneously, share in the artist’s positive outlook onto the horizon.
This series could as well make a permanent home at Portland Bill Lighthouse, the architectural motif which recurs most frequently in Barrangi’s work - and may provide opportunities for more in the region. One Night, One Dream, Life in the Lighthouse was part of Smeaton300, a programme to commemorate the Leeds-born – and likely the UK’s first - civil engineer, John Smeaton. Constructed in 1759, and renamed in 1882, Smeaton’s Tower on Plymouth Hoe likewise attracts visitors local and global; though a property of The Box, the city’s museum and art gallery, it has yet to be integrated within its contemporary arts landscape.
Plymouth, like Portland, could prove an interesting context for Barrangi, as he explores new locations for his site-specific work. With its history as a former colonial seaport, and contemporary status as a so-called ‘Dispersal City’, it is home to a predominantly white, working-class population, and growing migrant and refugee community. Portland has also served as a home for almost 600 temporary residents from the Bibby Stockholm. The Island’s intentions, though, are longer-term; though Barrangi’s sculpture leaves for his forthcoming exhibition in Nottingham, his murals remain, a continued presence on - and for - Portland. Visiting artists of different backgrounds also have expressed a sense of welcome, unsettling their stereotypes of working in rural regions, and the often extractive nature of cultural tourism.
Arts organisations should take note of b-side, and its careful, considered approach. Rocca Holly-Nambi and Sally Watkins, Director and Curator respectively, remark upon the Festival’s almost incidental concerns of migration, climate crises, and disability - themes which can be developed though collaboration with more activist, ‘strategic partners’ like Counterpoints Arts, and in different contexts. Informed by their work across contexts, Barrangi’s Nottingham exhibition will emphasise the impact of climate change on native animals and communities in southern Iran. Critically, though, these lived experiences might inform, but must not be used to define, either artist or audiences. Barrangi’s dreams, limitless in their scope, are a reminder.
Mohammad Barrangi: Dream of the Sea opens at b-side Festival 2024 in Portland in September 2024.
Mohammad Barrangi: The Last Rain in Wonderland is on view at New Art Exchange in Nottingham from 19 October 2024.
Movement permeates Mohammad Barrangi’s lives. Born in Rasht in 1988, he first pursued graphic design and book illustration in Iran’s leading educational institutions - there, though, he remains best known for his first profession, as a Paralympic runner. Relocating to Yorkshire in 2017, he has since enjoyed major exhibitions in places like The Art House in Wakefield and Edinburgh Printmakers; in 2022, both print-specialists made welcome homes for the artist, who brings together ‘traditional’ Persian calligraphy and iconography, historic European scientific illustrations, and experimental techniques in his work.
Barrangi’s lines on paper often translate across media, into large-scale murals, installations, and sound works. Extending his work in three-dimensional sculpture, first developed and exhibited in Wakefield, his most recent exhibition in Leeds told a fantastical story of a young girl called Lily, setting sail in a small boat from Anzali, a city on the Caspian Sea in northern Iran, to northern England. In the city where Barrangi is based, the tale was taken as neatly autobiographical; but the experiences and motivations of such migrations are, always, particular and more complex. Barrangi did not migrate in a small boat, but did endure other, connected challenges in the two years it took to ‘achieve’ the status of asylum seeker, including political detention. Still – or so - he maintains a positive approach to his personal life and artistic practice, a stated commitment to transform what may seem like adversities into possibilities.
A new body of work sits at the core of b-side Festival 2024, an annual celebration of contemporary art commissioned and produced in response to the Isle of Portland in Dorset. It is part of the organisation’s year-round Common Lands programme, which uses the island as a microcosm to explore relationships to and with lands ‘here and elsewhere’ - a project inspired by a collaboration with photographer Farhad Berahman (like Barrangi, Iranian-born and UK-based). Artists, researchers, and residents are afforded ample space to navigate these interconnected physical, environmental, and human contexts, of sustainable tourism and coastal erosion, land ownership and displacement, homogeneous communities and biodiversity.
Though yet to present or work in the South West, Barrangi considers themes clearly relevant to audiences in the region. Nor are such collaborations new to his practice; his association with The Art House started as part of their Studio of Sanctuary residency programme, which supports artists who are refugees and asylum seekers to continue to work. Beyond the legacy of Berahman, it is the audio works that linger in the memories of islanders and regulars to festivals past. Barrangi was joined at b side 2024 by Dhaqan Collective, presenting their nomadic House of Weaving Songs, a multisensory tribute to Somali heritage in the face of climate crises. With the support of the Counterpoints Arts – the producers of festivals including Refugee Week, who first brought Berahman to b-side’s attention - their work will continue to travel from Bristol to London and, soon, the Eden Project in Cornwall.
Barrangi too brings together stories from really-existing exiles, and mythological figures both from Iran and local to the island. In a mural along the seawall of Quiddles Cafés, the artist crops, repeats, and scales up fragments of found images; at Chiswell Community Garden, he adds the first in a series of works referencing royalty, which also extends to the sculptural representation of human figures with limb difference. (Whilst present in Portland throughout the weekend Festival, the artist admitted his attention was sometimes distracted by the Summer Paralympic Games simultaneously closing in Paris.)
A stone’s throw from the English Channel, the waterfront location creates space for more subtle interpretations than the ubiquitous ‘dream’ of his exhibition titles. Barrangi collages place, time and memory, adding a deceptive look of history, by fading the printed vinyl before layering atop the Portland stone. With his ambiguous bodies, often represented with lost or missing arms and legs, we might speculate the othering of those journeying to Britain’s shores – and simultaneously, share in the artist’s positive outlook onto the horizon.
This series could as well make a permanent home at Portland Bill Lighthouse, the architectural motif which recurs most frequently in Barrangi’s work - and may provide opportunities for more in the region. One Night, One Dream, Life in the Lighthouse was part of Smeaton300, a programme to commemorate the Leeds-born – and likely the UK’s first - civil engineer, John Smeaton. Constructed in 1759, and renamed in 1882, Smeaton’s Tower on Plymouth Hoe likewise attracts visitors local and global; though a property of The Box, the city’s museum and art gallery, it has yet to be integrated within its contemporary arts landscape.
Plymouth, like Portland, could prove an interesting context for Barrangi, as he explores new locations for his site-specific work. With its history as a former colonial seaport, and contemporary status as a so-called ‘Dispersal City’, it is home to a predominantly white, working-class population, and growing migrant and refugee community. Portland has also served as a home for almost 600 temporary residents from the Bibby Stockholm. The Island’s intentions, though, are longer-term; though Barrangi’s sculpture leaves for his forthcoming exhibition in Nottingham, his murals remain, a continued presence on - and for - Portland. Visiting artists of different backgrounds also have expressed a sense of welcome, unsettling their stereotypes of working in rural regions, and the often extractive nature of cultural tourism.
Arts organisations should take note of b-side, and its careful, considered approach. Rocca Holly-Nambi and Sally Watkins, Director and Curator respectively, remark upon the Festival’s almost incidental concerns of migration, climate crises, and disability - themes which can be developed though collaboration with more activist, ‘strategic partners’ like Counterpoints Arts, and in different contexts. Informed by their work across contexts, Barrangi’s Nottingham exhibition will emphasise the impact of climate change on native animals and communities in southern Iran. Critically, though, these lived experiences might inform, but must not be used to define, either artist or audiences. Barrangi’s dreams, limitless in their scope, are a reminder.
Mohammad Barrangi: Dream of the Sea opens at b-side Festival 2024 in Portland in September 2024.
Mohammad Barrangi: The Last Rain in Wonderland is on view at New Art Exchange in Nottingham from 19 October 2024.
Movement permeates Mohammad Barrangi’s lives. Born in Rasht in 1988, he first pursued graphic design and book illustration in Iran’s leading educational institutions - there, though, he remains best known for his first profession, as a Paralympic runner. Relocating to Yorkshire in 2017, he has since enjoyed major exhibitions in places like The Art House in Wakefield and Edinburgh Printmakers; in 2022, both print-specialists made welcome homes for the artist, who brings together ‘traditional’ Persian calligraphy and iconography, historic European scientific illustrations, and experimental techniques in his work.
Barrangi’s lines on paper often translate across media, into large-scale murals, installations, and sound works. Extending his work in three-dimensional sculpture, first developed and exhibited in Wakefield, his most recent exhibition in Leeds told a fantastical story of a young girl called Lily, setting sail in a small boat from Anzali, a city on the Caspian Sea in northern Iran, to northern England. In the city where Barrangi is based, the tale was taken as neatly autobiographical; but the experiences and motivations of such migrations are, always, particular and more complex. Barrangi did not migrate in a small boat, but did endure other, connected challenges in the two years it took to ‘achieve’ the status of asylum seeker, including political detention. Still – or so - he maintains a positive approach to his personal life and artistic practice, a stated commitment to transform what may seem like adversities into possibilities.
A new body of work sits at the core of b-side Festival 2024, an annual celebration of contemporary art commissioned and produced in response to the Isle of Portland in Dorset. It is part of the organisation’s year-round Common Lands programme, which uses the island as a microcosm to explore relationships to and with lands ‘here and elsewhere’ - a project inspired by a collaboration with photographer Farhad Berahman (like Barrangi, Iranian-born and UK-based). Artists, researchers, and residents are afforded ample space to navigate these interconnected physical, environmental, and human contexts, of sustainable tourism and coastal erosion, land ownership and displacement, homogeneous communities and biodiversity.
Though yet to present or work in the South West, Barrangi considers themes clearly relevant to audiences in the region. Nor are such collaborations new to his practice; his association with The Art House started as part of their Studio of Sanctuary residency programme, which supports artists who are refugees and asylum seekers to continue to work. Beyond the legacy of Berahman, it is the audio works that linger in the memories of islanders and regulars to festivals past. Barrangi was joined at b side 2024 by Dhaqan Collective, presenting their nomadic House of Weaving Songs, a multisensory tribute to Somali heritage in the face of climate crises. With the support of the Counterpoints Arts – the producers of festivals including Refugee Week, who first brought Berahman to b-side’s attention - their work will continue to travel from Bristol to London and, soon, the Eden Project in Cornwall.
Barrangi too brings together stories from really-existing exiles, and mythological figures both from Iran and local to the island. In a mural along the seawall of Quiddles Cafés, the artist crops, repeats, and scales up fragments of found images; at Chiswell Community Garden, he adds the first in a series of works referencing royalty, which also extends to the sculptural representation of human figures with limb difference. (Whilst present in Portland throughout the weekend Festival, the artist admitted his attention was sometimes distracted by the Summer Paralympic Games simultaneously closing in Paris.)
A stone’s throw from the English Channel, the waterfront location creates space for more subtle interpretations than the ubiquitous ‘dream’ of his exhibition titles. Barrangi collages place, time and memory, adding a deceptive look of history, by fading the printed vinyl before layering atop the Portland stone. With his ambiguous bodies, often represented with lost or missing arms and legs, we might speculate the othering of those journeying to Britain’s shores – and simultaneously, share in the artist’s positive outlook onto the horizon.
This series could as well make a permanent home at Portland Bill Lighthouse, the architectural motif which recurs most frequently in Barrangi’s work - and may provide opportunities for more in the region. One Night, One Dream, Life in the Lighthouse was part of Smeaton300, a programme to commemorate the Leeds-born – and likely the UK’s first - civil engineer, John Smeaton. Constructed in 1759, and renamed in 1882, Smeaton’s Tower on Plymouth Hoe likewise attracts visitors local and global; though a property of The Box, the city’s museum and art gallery, it has yet to be integrated within its contemporary arts landscape.
Plymouth, like Portland, could prove an interesting context for Barrangi, as he explores new locations for his site-specific work. With its history as a former colonial seaport, and contemporary status as a so-called ‘Dispersal City’, it is home to a predominantly white, working-class population, and growing migrant and refugee community. Portland has also served as a home for almost 600 temporary residents from the Bibby Stockholm. The Island’s intentions, though, are longer-term; though Barrangi’s sculpture leaves for his forthcoming exhibition in Nottingham, his murals remain, a continued presence on - and for - Portland. Visiting artists of different backgrounds also have expressed a sense of welcome, unsettling their stereotypes of working in rural regions, and the often extractive nature of cultural tourism.
Arts organisations should take note of b-side, and its careful, considered approach. Rocca Holly-Nambi and Sally Watkins, Director and Curator respectively, remark upon the Festival’s almost incidental concerns of migration, climate crises, and disability - themes which can be developed though collaboration with more activist, ‘strategic partners’ like Counterpoints Arts, and in different contexts. Informed by their work across contexts, Barrangi’s Nottingham exhibition will emphasise the impact of climate change on native animals and communities in southern Iran. Critically, though, these lived experiences might inform, but must not be used to define, either artist or audiences. Barrangi’s dreams, limitless in their scope, are a reminder.
Mohammad Barrangi: Dream of the Sea opens at b-side Festival 2024 in Portland in September 2024.
Mohammad Barrangi: The Last Rain in Wonderland is on view at New Art Exchange in Nottingham from 19 October 2024.
Movement permeates Mohammad Barrangi’s lives. Born in Rasht in 1988, he first pursued graphic design and book illustration in Iran’s leading educational institutions - there, though, he remains best known for his first profession, as a Paralympic runner. Relocating to Yorkshire in 2017, he has since enjoyed major exhibitions in places like The Art House in Wakefield and Edinburgh Printmakers; in 2022, both print-specialists made welcome homes for the artist, who brings together ‘traditional’ Persian calligraphy and iconography, historic European scientific illustrations, and experimental techniques in his work.
Barrangi’s lines on paper often translate across media, into large-scale murals, installations, and sound works. Extending his work in three-dimensional sculpture, first developed and exhibited in Wakefield, his most recent exhibition in Leeds told a fantastical story of a young girl called Lily, setting sail in a small boat from Anzali, a city on the Caspian Sea in northern Iran, to northern England. In the city where Barrangi is based, the tale was taken as neatly autobiographical; but the experiences and motivations of such migrations are, always, particular and more complex. Barrangi did not migrate in a small boat, but did endure other, connected challenges in the two years it took to ‘achieve’ the status of asylum seeker, including political detention. Still – or so - he maintains a positive approach to his personal life and artistic practice, a stated commitment to transform what may seem like adversities into possibilities.
A new body of work sits at the core of b-side Festival 2024, an annual celebration of contemporary art commissioned and produced in response to the Isle of Portland in Dorset. It is part of the organisation’s year-round Common Lands programme, which uses the island as a microcosm to explore relationships to and with lands ‘here and elsewhere’ - a project inspired by a collaboration with photographer Farhad Berahman (like Barrangi, Iranian-born and UK-based). Artists, researchers, and residents are afforded ample space to navigate these interconnected physical, environmental, and human contexts, of sustainable tourism and coastal erosion, land ownership and displacement, homogeneous communities and biodiversity.
Though yet to present or work in the South West, Barrangi considers themes clearly relevant to audiences in the region. Nor are such collaborations new to his practice; his association with The Art House started as part of their Studio of Sanctuary residency programme, which supports artists who are refugees and asylum seekers to continue to work. Beyond the legacy of Berahman, it is the audio works that linger in the memories of islanders and regulars to festivals past. Barrangi was joined at b side 2024 by Dhaqan Collective, presenting their nomadic House of Weaving Songs, a multisensory tribute to Somali heritage in the face of climate crises. With the support of the Counterpoints Arts – the producers of festivals including Refugee Week, who first brought Berahman to b-side’s attention - their work will continue to travel from Bristol to London and, soon, the Eden Project in Cornwall.
Barrangi too brings together stories from really-existing exiles, and mythological figures both from Iran and local to the island. In a mural along the seawall of Quiddles Cafés, the artist crops, repeats, and scales up fragments of found images; at Chiswell Community Garden, he adds the first in a series of works referencing royalty, which also extends to the sculptural representation of human figures with limb difference. (Whilst present in Portland throughout the weekend Festival, the artist admitted his attention was sometimes distracted by the Summer Paralympic Games simultaneously closing in Paris.)
A stone’s throw from the English Channel, the waterfront location creates space for more subtle interpretations than the ubiquitous ‘dream’ of his exhibition titles. Barrangi collages place, time and memory, adding a deceptive look of history, by fading the printed vinyl before layering atop the Portland stone. With his ambiguous bodies, often represented with lost or missing arms and legs, we might speculate the othering of those journeying to Britain’s shores – and simultaneously, share in the artist’s positive outlook onto the horizon.
This series could as well make a permanent home at Portland Bill Lighthouse, the architectural motif which recurs most frequently in Barrangi’s work - and may provide opportunities for more in the region. One Night, One Dream, Life in the Lighthouse was part of Smeaton300, a programme to commemorate the Leeds-born – and likely the UK’s first - civil engineer, John Smeaton. Constructed in 1759, and renamed in 1882, Smeaton’s Tower on Plymouth Hoe likewise attracts visitors local and global; though a property of The Box, the city’s museum and art gallery, it has yet to be integrated within its contemporary arts landscape.
Plymouth, like Portland, could prove an interesting context for Barrangi, as he explores new locations for his site-specific work. With its history as a former colonial seaport, and contemporary status as a so-called ‘Dispersal City’, it is home to a predominantly white, working-class population, and growing migrant and refugee community. Portland has also served as a home for almost 600 temporary residents from the Bibby Stockholm. The Island’s intentions, though, are longer-term; though Barrangi’s sculpture leaves for his forthcoming exhibition in Nottingham, his murals remain, a continued presence on - and for - Portland. Visiting artists of different backgrounds also have expressed a sense of welcome, unsettling their stereotypes of working in rural regions, and the often extractive nature of cultural tourism.
Arts organisations should take note of b-side, and its careful, considered approach. Rocca Holly-Nambi and Sally Watkins, Director and Curator respectively, remark upon the Festival’s almost incidental concerns of migration, climate crises, and disability - themes which can be developed though collaboration with more activist, ‘strategic partners’ like Counterpoints Arts, and in different contexts. Informed by their work across contexts, Barrangi’s Nottingham exhibition will emphasise the impact of climate change on native animals and communities in southern Iran. Critically, though, these lived experiences might inform, but must not be used to define, either artist or audiences. Barrangi’s dreams, limitless in their scope, are a reminder.
Mohammad Barrangi: Dream of the Sea opens at b-side Festival 2024 in Portland in September 2024.
Mohammad Barrangi: The Last Rain in Wonderland is on view at New Art Exchange in Nottingham from 19 October 2024.
Movement permeates Mohammad Barrangi’s lives. Born in Rasht in 1988, he first pursued graphic design and book illustration in Iran’s leading educational institutions - there, though, he remains best known for his first profession, as a Paralympic runner. Relocating to Yorkshire in 2017, he has since enjoyed major exhibitions in places like The Art House in Wakefield and Edinburgh Printmakers; in 2022, both print-specialists made welcome homes for the artist, who brings together ‘traditional’ Persian calligraphy and iconography, historic European scientific illustrations, and experimental techniques in his work.
Barrangi’s lines on paper often translate across media, into large-scale murals, installations, and sound works. Extending his work in three-dimensional sculpture, first developed and exhibited in Wakefield, his most recent exhibition in Leeds told a fantastical story of a young girl called Lily, setting sail in a small boat from Anzali, a city on the Caspian Sea in northern Iran, to northern England. In the city where Barrangi is based, the tale was taken as neatly autobiographical; but the experiences and motivations of such migrations are, always, particular and more complex. Barrangi did not migrate in a small boat, but did endure other, connected challenges in the two years it took to ‘achieve’ the status of asylum seeker, including political detention. Still – or so - he maintains a positive approach to his personal life and artistic practice, a stated commitment to transform what may seem like adversities into possibilities.
A new body of work sits at the core of b-side Festival 2024, an annual celebration of contemporary art commissioned and produced in response to the Isle of Portland in Dorset. It is part of the organisation’s year-round Common Lands programme, which uses the island as a microcosm to explore relationships to and with lands ‘here and elsewhere’ - a project inspired by a collaboration with photographer Farhad Berahman (like Barrangi, Iranian-born and UK-based). Artists, researchers, and residents are afforded ample space to navigate these interconnected physical, environmental, and human contexts, of sustainable tourism and coastal erosion, land ownership and displacement, homogeneous communities and biodiversity.
Though yet to present or work in the South West, Barrangi considers themes clearly relevant to audiences in the region. Nor are such collaborations new to his practice; his association with The Art House started as part of their Studio of Sanctuary residency programme, which supports artists who are refugees and asylum seekers to continue to work. Beyond the legacy of Berahman, it is the audio works that linger in the memories of islanders and regulars to festivals past. Barrangi was joined at b side 2024 by Dhaqan Collective, presenting their nomadic House of Weaving Songs, a multisensory tribute to Somali heritage in the face of climate crises. With the support of the Counterpoints Arts – the producers of festivals including Refugee Week, who first brought Berahman to b-side’s attention - their work will continue to travel from Bristol to London and, soon, the Eden Project in Cornwall.
Barrangi too brings together stories from really-existing exiles, and mythological figures both from Iran and local to the island. In a mural along the seawall of Quiddles Cafés, the artist crops, repeats, and scales up fragments of found images; at Chiswell Community Garden, he adds the first in a series of works referencing royalty, which also extends to the sculptural representation of human figures with limb difference. (Whilst present in Portland throughout the weekend Festival, the artist admitted his attention was sometimes distracted by the Summer Paralympic Games simultaneously closing in Paris.)
A stone’s throw from the English Channel, the waterfront location creates space for more subtle interpretations than the ubiquitous ‘dream’ of his exhibition titles. Barrangi collages place, time and memory, adding a deceptive look of history, by fading the printed vinyl before layering atop the Portland stone. With his ambiguous bodies, often represented with lost or missing arms and legs, we might speculate the othering of those journeying to Britain’s shores – and simultaneously, share in the artist’s positive outlook onto the horizon.
This series could as well make a permanent home at Portland Bill Lighthouse, the architectural motif which recurs most frequently in Barrangi’s work - and may provide opportunities for more in the region. One Night, One Dream, Life in the Lighthouse was part of Smeaton300, a programme to commemorate the Leeds-born – and likely the UK’s first - civil engineer, John Smeaton. Constructed in 1759, and renamed in 1882, Smeaton’s Tower on Plymouth Hoe likewise attracts visitors local and global; though a property of The Box, the city’s museum and art gallery, it has yet to be integrated within its contemporary arts landscape.
Plymouth, like Portland, could prove an interesting context for Barrangi, as he explores new locations for his site-specific work. With its history as a former colonial seaport, and contemporary status as a so-called ‘Dispersal City’, it is home to a predominantly white, working-class population, and growing migrant and refugee community. Portland has also served as a home for almost 600 temporary residents from the Bibby Stockholm. The Island’s intentions, though, are longer-term; though Barrangi’s sculpture leaves for his forthcoming exhibition in Nottingham, his murals remain, a continued presence on - and for - Portland. Visiting artists of different backgrounds also have expressed a sense of welcome, unsettling their stereotypes of working in rural regions, and the often extractive nature of cultural tourism.
Arts organisations should take note of b-side, and its careful, considered approach. Rocca Holly-Nambi and Sally Watkins, Director and Curator respectively, remark upon the Festival’s almost incidental concerns of migration, climate crises, and disability - themes which can be developed though collaboration with more activist, ‘strategic partners’ like Counterpoints Arts, and in different contexts. Informed by their work across contexts, Barrangi’s Nottingham exhibition will emphasise the impact of climate change on native animals and communities in southern Iran. Critically, though, these lived experiences might inform, but must not be used to define, either artist or audiences. Barrangi’s dreams, limitless in their scope, are a reminder.
Mohammad Barrangi: Dream of the Sea opens at b-side Festival 2024 in Portland in September 2024.
Mohammad Barrangi: The Last Rain in Wonderland is on view at New Art Exchange in Nottingham from 19 October 2024.
Movement permeates Mohammad Barrangi’s lives. Born in Rasht in 1988, he first pursued graphic design and book illustration in Iran’s leading educational institutions - there, though, he remains best known for his first profession, as a Paralympic runner. Relocating to Yorkshire in 2017, he has since enjoyed major exhibitions in places like The Art House in Wakefield and Edinburgh Printmakers; in 2022, both print-specialists made welcome homes for the artist, who brings together ‘traditional’ Persian calligraphy and iconography, historic European scientific illustrations, and experimental techniques in his work.
Barrangi’s lines on paper often translate across media, into large-scale murals, installations, and sound works. Extending his work in three-dimensional sculpture, first developed and exhibited in Wakefield, his most recent exhibition in Leeds told a fantastical story of a young girl called Lily, setting sail in a small boat from Anzali, a city on the Caspian Sea in northern Iran, to northern England. In the city where Barrangi is based, the tale was taken as neatly autobiographical; but the experiences and motivations of such migrations are, always, particular and more complex. Barrangi did not migrate in a small boat, but did endure other, connected challenges in the two years it took to ‘achieve’ the status of asylum seeker, including political detention. Still – or so - he maintains a positive approach to his personal life and artistic practice, a stated commitment to transform what may seem like adversities into possibilities.
A new body of work sits at the core of b-side Festival 2024, an annual celebration of contemporary art commissioned and produced in response to the Isle of Portland in Dorset. It is part of the organisation’s year-round Common Lands programme, which uses the island as a microcosm to explore relationships to and with lands ‘here and elsewhere’ - a project inspired by a collaboration with photographer Farhad Berahman (like Barrangi, Iranian-born and UK-based). Artists, researchers, and residents are afforded ample space to navigate these interconnected physical, environmental, and human contexts, of sustainable tourism and coastal erosion, land ownership and displacement, homogeneous communities and biodiversity.
Though yet to present or work in the South West, Barrangi considers themes clearly relevant to audiences in the region. Nor are such collaborations new to his practice; his association with The Art House started as part of their Studio of Sanctuary residency programme, which supports artists who are refugees and asylum seekers to continue to work. Beyond the legacy of Berahman, it is the audio works that linger in the memories of islanders and regulars to festivals past. Barrangi was joined at b side 2024 by Dhaqan Collective, presenting their nomadic House of Weaving Songs, a multisensory tribute to Somali heritage in the face of climate crises. With the support of the Counterpoints Arts – the producers of festivals including Refugee Week, who first brought Berahman to b-side’s attention - their work will continue to travel from Bristol to London and, soon, the Eden Project in Cornwall.
Barrangi too brings together stories from really-existing exiles, and mythological figures both from Iran and local to the island. In a mural along the seawall of Quiddles Cafés, the artist crops, repeats, and scales up fragments of found images; at Chiswell Community Garden, he adds the first in a series of works referencing royalty, which also extends to the sculptural representation of human figures with limb difference. (Whilst present in Portland throughout the weekend Festival, the artist admitted his attention was sometimes distracted by the Summer Paralympic Games simultaneously closing in Paris.)
A stone’s throw from the English Channel, the waterfront location creates space for more subtle interpretations than the ubiquitous ‘dream’ of his exhibition titles. Barrangi collages place, time and memory, adding a deceptive look of history, by fading the printed vinyl before layering atop the Portland stone. With his ambiguous bodies, often represented with lost or missing arms and legs, we might speculate the othering of those journeying to Britain’s shores – and simultaneously, share in the artist’s positive outlook onto the horizon.
This series could as well make a permanent home at Portland Bill Lighthouse, the architectural motif which recurs most frequently in Barrangi’s work - and may provide opportunities for more in the region. One Night, One Dream, Life in the Lighthouse was part of Smeaton300, a programme to commemorate the Leeds-born – and likely the UK’s first - civil engineer, John Smeaton. Constructed in 1759, and renamed in 1882, Smeaton’s Tower on Plymouth Hoe likewise attracts visitors local and global; though a property of The Box, the city’s museum and art gallery, it has yet to be integrated within its contemporary arts landscape.
Plymouth, like Portland, could prove an interesting context for Barrangi, as he explores new locations for his site-specific work. With its history as a former colonial seaport, and contemporary status as a so-called ‘Dispersal City’, it is home to a predominantly white, working-class population, and growing migrant and refugee community. Portland has also served as a home for almost 600 temporary residents from the Bibby Stockholm. The Island’s intentions, though, are longer-term; though Barrangi’s sculpture leaves for his forthcoming exhibition in Nottingham, his murals remain, a continued presence on - and for - Portland. Visiting artists of different backgrounds also have expressed a sense of welcome, unsettling their stereotypes of working in rural regions, and the often extractive nature of cultural tourism.
Arts organisations should take note of b-side, and its careful, considered approach. Rocca Holly-Nambi and Sally Watkins, Director and Curator respectively, remark upon the Festival’s almost incidental concerns of migration, climate crises, and disability - themes which can be developed though collaboration with more activist, ‘strategic partners’ like Counterpoints Arts, and in different contexts. Informed by their work across contexts, Barrangi’s Nottingham exhibition will emphasise the impact of climate change on native animals and communities in southern Iran. Critically, though, these lived experiences might inform, but must not be used to define, either artist or audiences. Barrangi’s dreams, limitless in their scope, are a reminder.
Mohammad Barrangi: Dream of the Sea opens at b-side Festival 2024 in Portland in September 2024.
Mohammad Barrangi: The Last Rain in Wonderland is on view at New Art Exchange in Nottingham from 19 October 2024.
Movement permeates Mohammad Barrangi’s lives. Born in Rasht in 1988, he first pursued graphic design and book illustration in Iran’s leading educational institutions - there, though, he remains best known for his first profession, as a Paralympic runner. Relocating to Yorkshire in 2017, he has since enjoyed major exhibitions in places like The Art House in Wakefield and Edinburgh Printmakers; in 2022, both print-specialists made welcome homes for the artist, who brings together ‘traditional’ Persian calligraphy and iconography, historic European scientific illustrations, and experimental techniques in his work.
Barrangi’s lines on paper often translate across media, into large-scale murals, installations, and sound works. Extending his work in three-dimensional sculpture, first developed and exhibited in Wakefield, his most recent exhibition in Leeds told a fantastical story of a young girl called Lily, setting sail in a small boat from Anzali, a city on the Caspian Sea in northern Iran, to northern England. In the city where Barrangi is based, the tale was taken as neatly autobiographical; but the experiences and motivations of such migrations are, always, particular and more complex. Barrangi did not migrate in a small boat, but did endure other, connected challenges in the two years it took to ‘achieve’ the status of asylum seeker, including political detention. Still – or so - he maintains a positive approach to his personal life and artistic practice, a stated commitment to transform what may seem like adversities into possibilities.
A new body of work sits at the core of b-side Festival 2024, an annual celebration of contemporary art commissioned and produced in response to the Isle of Portland in Dorset. It is part of the organisation’s year-round Common Lands programme, which uses the island as a microcosm to explore relationships to and with lands ‘here and elsewhere’ - a project inspired by a collaboration with photographer Farhad Berahman (like Barrangi, Iranian-born and UK-based). Artists, researchers, and residents are afforded ample space to navigate these interconnected physical, environmental, and human contexts, of sustainable tourism and coastal erosion, land ownership and displacement, homogeneous communities and biodiversity.
Though yet to present or work in the South West, Barrangi considers themes clearly relevant to audiences in the region. Nor are such collaborations new to his practice; his association with The Art House started as part of their Studio of Sanctuary residency programme, which supports artists who are refugees and asylum seekers to continue to work. Beyond the legacy of Berahman, it is the audio works that linger in the memories of islanders and regulars to festivals past. Barrangi was joined at b side 2024 by Dhaqan Collective, presenting their nomadic House of Weaving Songs, a multisensory tribute to Somali heritage in the face of climate crises. With the support of the Counterpoints Arts – the producers of festivals including Refugee Week, who first brought Berahman to b-side’s attention - their work will continue to travel from Bristol to London and, soon, the Eden Project in Cornwall.
Barrangi too brings together stories from really-existing exiles, and mythological figures both from Iran and local to the island. In a mural along the seawall of Quiddles Cafés, the artist crops, repeats, and scales up fragments of found images; at Chiswell Community Garden, he adds the first in a series of works referencing royalty, which also extends to the sculptural representation of human figures with limb difference. (Whilst present in Portland throughout the weekend Festival, the artist admitted his attention was sometimes distracted by the Summer Paralympic Games simultaneously closing in Paris.)
A stone’s throw from the English Channel, the waterfront location creates space for more subtle interpretations than the ubiquitous ‘dream’ of his exhibition titles. Barrangi collages place, time and memory, adding a deceptive look of history, by fading the printed vinyl before layering atop the Portland stone. With his ambiguous bodies, often represented with lost or missing arms and legs, we might speculate the othering of those journeying to Britain’s shores – and simultaneously, share in the artist’s positive outlook onto the horizon.
This series could as well make a permanent home at Portland Bill Lighthouse, the architectural motif which recurs most frequently in Barrangi’s work - and may provide opportunities for more in the region. One Night, One Dream, Life in the Lighthouse was part of Smeaton300, a programme to commemorate the Leeds-born – and likely the UK’s first - civil engineer, John Smeaton. Constructed in 1759, and renamed in 1882, Smeaton’s Tower on Plymouth Hoe likewise attracts visitors local and global; though a property of The Box, the city’s museum and art gallery, it has yet to be integrated within its contemporary arts landscape.
Plymouth, like Portland, could prove an interesting context for Barrangi, as he explores new locations for his site-specific work. With its history as a former colonial seaport, and contemporary status as a so-called ‘Dispersal City’, it is home to a predominantly white, working-class population, and growing migrant and refugee community. Portland has also served as a home for almost 600 temporary residents from the Bibby Stockholm. The Island’s intentions, though, are longer-term; though Barrangi’s sculpture leaves for his forthcoming exhibition in Nottingham, his murals remain, a continued presence on - and for - Portland. Visiting artists of different backgrounds also have expressed a sense of welcome, unsettling their stereotypes of working in rural regions, and the often extractive nature of cultural tourism.
Arts organisations should take note of b-side, and its careful, considered approach. Rocca Holly-Nambi and Sally Watkins, Director and Curator respectively, remark upon the Festival’s almost incidental concerns of migration, climate crises, and disability - themes which can be developed though collaboration with more activist, ‘strategic partners’ like Counterpoints Arts, and in different contexts. Informed by their work across contexts, Barrangi’s Nottingham exhibition will emphasise the impact of climate change on native animals and communities in southern Iran. Critically, though, these lived experiences might inform, but must not be used to define, either artist or audiences. Barrangi’s dreams, limitless in their scope, are a reminder.
Mohammad Barrangi: Dream of the Sea opens at b-side Festival 2024 in Portland in September 2024.
Mohammad Barrangi: The Last Rain in Wonderland is on view at New Art Exchange in Nottingham from 19 October 2024.
Movement permeates Mohammad Barrangi’s lives. Born in Rasht in 1988, he first pursued graphic design and book illustration in Iran’s leading educational institutions - there, though, he remains best known for his first profession, as a Paralympic runner. Relocating to Yorkshire in 2017, he has since enjoyed major exhibitions in places like The Art House in Wakefield and Edinburgh Printmakers; in 2022, both print-specialists made welcome homes for the artist, who brings together ‘traditional’ Persian calligraphy and iconography, historic European scientific illustrations, and experimental techniques in his work.
Barrangi’s lines on paper often translate across media, into large-scale murals, installations, and sound works. Extending his work in three-dimensional sculpture, first developed and exhibited in Wakefield, his most recent exhibition in Leeds told a fantastical story of a young girl called Lily, setting sail in a small boat from Anzali, a city on the Caspian Sea in northern Iran, to northern England. In the city where Barrangi is based, the tale was taken as neatly autobiographical; but the experiences and motivations of such migrations are, always, particular and more complex. Barrangi did not migrate in a small boat, but did endure other, connected challenges in the two years it took to ‘achieve’ the status of asylum seeker, including political detention. Still – or so - he maintains a positive approach to his personal life and artistic practice, a stated commitment to transform what may seem like adversities into possibilities.
A new body of work sits at the core of b-side Festival 2024, an annual celebration of contemporary art commissioned and produced in response to the Isle of Portland in Dorset. It is part of the organisation’s year-round Common Lands programme, which uses the island as a microcosm to explore relationships to and with lands ‘here and elsewhere’ - a project inspired by a collaboration with photographer Farhad Berahman (like Barrangi, Iranian-born and UK-based). Artists, researchers, and residents are afforded ample space to navigate these interconnected physical, environmental, and human contexts, of sustainable tourism and coastal erosion, land ownership and displacement, homogeneous communities and biodiversity.
Though yet to present or work in the South West, Barrangi considers themes clearly relevant to audiences in the region. Nor are such collaborations new to his practice; his association with The Art House started as part of their Studio of Sanctuary residency programme, which supports artists who are refugees and asylum seekers to continue to work. Beyond the legacy of Berahman, it is the audio works that linger in the memories of islanders and regulars to festivals past. Barrangi was joined at b side 2024 by Dhaqan Collective, presenting their nomadic House of Weaving Songs, a multisensory tribute to Somali heritage in the face of climate crises. With the support of the Counterpoints Arts – the producers of festivals including Refugee Week, who first brought Berahman to b-side’s attention - their work will continue to travel from Bristol to London and, soon, the Eden Project in Cornwall.
Barrangi too brings together stories from really-existing exiles, and mythological figures both from Iran and local to the island. In a mural along the seawall of Quiddles Cafés, the artist crops, repeats, and scales up fragments of found images; at Chiswell Community Garden, he adds the first in a series of works referencing royalty, which also extends to the sculptural representation of human figures with limb difference. (Whilst present in Portland throughout the weekend Festival, the artist admitted his attention was sometimes distracted by the Summer Paralympic Games simultaneously closing in Paris.)
A stone’s throw from the English Channel, the waterfront location creates space for more subtle interpretations than the ubiquitous ‘dream’ of his exhibition titles. Barrangi collages place, time and memory, adding a deceptive look of history, by fading the printed vinyl before layering atop the Portland stone. With his ambiguous bodies, often represented with lost or missing arms and legs, we might speculate the othering of those journeying to Britain’s shores – and simultaneously, share in the artist’s positive outlook onto the horizon.
This series could as well make a permanent home at Portland Bill Lighthouse, the architectural motif which recurs most frequently in Barrangi’s work - and may provide opportunities for more in the region. One Night, One Dream, Life in the Lighthouse was part of Smeaton300, a programme to commemorate the Leeds-born – and likely the UK’s first - civil engineer, John Smeaton. Constructed in 1759, and renamed in 1882, Smeaton’s Tower on Plymouth Hoe likewise attracts visitors local and global; though a property of The Box, the city’s museum and art gallery, it has yet to be integrated within its contemporary arts landscape.
Plymouth, like Portland, could prove an interesting context for Barrangi, as he explores new locations for his site-specific work. With its history as a former colonial seaport, and contemporary status as a so-called ‘Dispersal City’, it is home to a predominantly white, working-class population, and growing migrant and refugee community. Portland has also served as a home for almost 600 temporary residents from the Bibby Stockholm. The Island’s intentions, though, are longer-term; though Barrangi’s sculpture leaves for his forthcoming exhibition in Nottingham, his murals remain, a continued presence on - and for - Portland. Visiting artists of different backgrounds also have expressed a sense of welcome, unsettling their stereotypes of working in rural regions, and the often extractive nature of cultural tourism.
Arts organisations should take note of b-side, and its careful, considered approach. Rocca Holly-Nambi and Sally Watkins, Director and Curator respectively, remark upon the Festival’s almost incidental concerns of migration, climate crises, and disability - themes which can be developed though collaboration with more activist, ‘strategic partners’ like Counterpoints Arts, and in different contexts. Informed by their work across contexts, Barrangi’s Nottingham exhibition will emphasise the impact of climate change on native animals and communities in southern Iran. Critically, though, these lived experiences might inform, but must not be used to define, either artist or audiences. Barrangi’s dreams, limitless in their scope, are a reminder.
Mohammad Barrangi: Dream of the Sea opens at b-side Festival 2024 in Portland in September 2024.
Mohammad Barrangi: The Last Rain in Wonderland is on view at New Art Exchange in Nottingham from 19 October 2024.
Movement permeates Mohammad Barrangi’s lives. Born in Rasht in 1988, he first pursued graphic design and book illustration in Iran’s leading educational institutions - there, though, he remains best known for his first profession, as a Paralympic runner. Relocating to Yorkshire in 2017, he has since enjoyed major exhibitions in places like The Art House in Wakefield and Edinburgh Printmakers; in 2022, both print-specialists made welcome homes for the artist, who brings together ‘traditional’ Persian calligraphy and iconography, historic European scientific illustrations, and experimental techniques in his work.
Barrangi’s lines on paper often translate across media, into large-scale murals, installations, and sound works. Extending his work in three-dimensional sculpture, first developed and exhibited in Wakefield, his most recent exhibition in Leeds told a fantastical story of a young girl called Lily, setting sail in a small boat from Anzali, a city on the Caspian Sea in northern Iran, to northern England. In the city where Barrangi is based, the tale was taken as neatly autobiographical; but the experiences and motivations of such migrations are, always, particular and more complex. Barrangi did not migrate in a small boat, but did endure other, connected challenges in the two years it took to ‘achieve’ the status of asylum seeker, including political detention. Still – or so - he maintains a positive approach to his personal life and artistic practice, a stated commitment to transform what may seem like adversities into possibilities.
A new body of work sits at the core of b-side Festival 2024, an annual celebration of contemporary art commissioned and produced in response to the Isle of Portland in Dorset. It is part of the organisation’s year-round Common Lands programme, which uses the island as a microcosm to explore relationships to and with lands ‘here and elsewhere’ - a project inspired by a collaboration with photographer Farhad Berahman (like Barrangi, Iranian-born and UK-based). Artists, researchers, and residents are afforded ample space to navigate these interconnected physical, environmental, and human contexts, of sustainable tourism and coastal erosion, land ownership and displacement, homogeneous communities and biodiversity.
Though yet to present or work in the South West, Barrangi considers themes clearly relevant to audiences in the region. Nor are such collaborations new to his practice; his association with The Art House started as part of their Studio of Sanctuary residency programme, which supports artists who are refugees and asylum seekers to continue to work. Beyond the legacy of Berahman, it is the audio works that linger in the memories of islanders and regulars to festivals past. Barrangi was joined at b side 2024 by Dhaqan Collective, presenting their nomadic House of Weaving Songs, a multisensory tribute to Somali heritage in the face of climate crises. With the support of the Counterpoints Arts – the producers of festivals including Refugee Week, who first brought Berahman to b-side’s attention - their work will continue to travel from Bristol to London and, soon, the Eden Project in Cornwall.
Barrangi too brings together stories from really-existing exiles, and mythological figures both from Iran and local to the island. In a mural along the seawall of Quiddles Cafés, the artist crops, repeats, and scales up fragments of found images; at Chiswell Community Garden, he adds the first in a series of works referencing royalty, which also extends to the sculptural representation of human figures with limb difference. (Whilst present in Portland throughout the weekend Festival, the artist admitted his attention was sometimes distracted by the Summer Paralympic Games simultaneously closing in Paris.)
A stone’s throw from the English Channel, the waterfront location creates space for more subtle interpretations than the ubiquitous ‘dream’ of his exhibition titles. Barrangi collages place, time and memory, adding a deceptive look of history, by fading the printed vinyl before layering atop the Portland stone. With his ambiguous bodies, often represented with lost or missing arms and legs, we might speculate the othering of those journeying to Britain’s shores – and simultaneously, share in the artist’s positive outlook onto the horizon.
This series could as well make a permanent home at Portland Bill Lighthouse, the architectural motif which recurs most frequently in Barrangi’s work - and may provide opportunities for more in the region. One Night, One Dream, Life in the Lighthouse was part of Smeaton300, a programme to commemorate the Leeds-born – and likely the UK’s first - civil engineer, John Smeaton. Constructed in 1759, and renamed in 1882, Smeaton’s Tower on Plymouth Hoe likewise attracts visitors local and global; though a property of The Box, the city’s museum and art gallery, it has yet to be integrated within its contemporary arts landscape.
Plymouth, like Portland, could prove an interesting context for Barrangi, as he explores new locations for his site-specific work. With its history as a former colonial seaport, and contemporary status as a so-called ‘Dispersal City’, it is home to a predominantly white, working-class population, and growing migrant and refugee community. Portland has also served as a home for almost 600 temporary residents from the Bibby Stockholm. The Island’s intentions, though, are longer-term; though Barrangi’s sculpture leaves for his forthcoming exhibition in Nottingham, his murals remain, a continued presence on - and for - Portland. Visiting artists of different backgrounds also have expressed a sense of welcome, unsettling their stereotypes of working in rural regions, and the often extractive nature of cultural tourism.
Arts organisations should take note of b-side, and its careful, considered approach. Rocca Holly-Nambi and Sally Watkins, Director and Curator respectively, remark upon the Festival’s almost incidental concerns of migration, climate crises, and disability - themes which can be developed though collaboration with more activist, ‘strategic partners’ like Counterpoints Arts, and in different contexts. Informed by their work across contexts, Barrangi’s Nottingham exhibition will emphasise the impact of climate change on native animals and communities in southern Iran. Critically, though, these lived experiences might inform, but must not be used to define, either artist or audiences. Barrangi’s dreams, limitless in their scope, are a reminder.
Mohammad Barrangi: Dream of the Sea opens at b-side Festival 2024 in Portland in September 2024.
Mohammad Barrangi: The Last Rain in Wonderland is on view at New Art Exchange in Nottingham from 19 October 2024.
Movement permeates Mohammad Barrangi’s lives. Born in Rasht in 1988, he first pursued graphic design and book illustration in Iran’s leading educational institutions - there, though, he remains best known for his first profession, as a Paralympic runner. Relocating to Yorkshire in 2017, he has since enjoyed major exhibitions in places like The Art House in Wakefield and Edinburgh Printmakers; in 2022, both print-specialists made welcome homes for the artist, who brings together ‘traditional’ Persian calligraphy and iconography, historic European scientific illustrations, and experimental techniques in his work.
Barrangi’s lines on paper often translate across media, into large-scale murals, installations, and sound works. Extending his work in three-dimensional sculpture, first developed and exhibited in Wakefield, his most recent exhibition in Leeds told a fantastical story of a young girl called Lily, setting sail in a small boat from Anzali, a city on the Caspian Sea in northern Iran, to northern England. In the city where Barrangi is based, the tale was taken as neatly autobiographical; but the experiences and motivations of such migrations are, always, particular and more complex. Barrangi did not migrate in a small boat, but did endure other, connected challenges in the two years it took to ‘achieve’ the status of asylum seeker, including political detention. Still – or so - he maintains a positive approach to his personal life and artistic practice, a stated commitment to transform what may seem like adversities into possibilities.
A new body of work sits at the core of b-side Festival 2024, an annual celebration of contemporary art commissioned and produced in response to the Isle of Portland in Dorset. It is part of the organisation’s year-round Common Lands programme, which uses the island as a microcosm to explore relationships to and with lands ‘here and elsewhere’ - a project inspired by a collaboration with photographer Farhad Berahman (like Barrangi, Iranian-born and UK-based). Artists, researchers, and residents are afforded ample space to navigate these interconnected physical, environmental, and human contexts, of sustainable tourism and coastal erosion, land ownership and displacement, homogeneous communities and biodiversity.
Though yet to present or work in the South West, Barrangi considers themes clearly relevant to audiences in the region. Nor are such collaborations new to his practice; his association with The Art House started as part of their Studio of Sanctuary residency programme, which supports artists who are refugees and asylum seekers to continue to work. Beyond the legacy of Berahman, it is the audio works that linger in the memories of islanders and regulars to festivals past. Barrangi was joined at b side 2024 by Dhaqan Collective, presenting their nomadic House of Weaving Songs, a multisensory tribute to Somali heritage in the face of climate crises. With the support of the Counterpoints Arts – the producers of festivals including Refugee Week, who first brought Berahman to b-side’s attention - their work will continue to travel from Bristol to London and, soon, the Eden Project in Cornwall.
Barrangi too brings together stories from really-existing exiles, and mythological figures both from Iran and local to the island. In a mural along the seawall of Quiddles Cafés, the artist crops, repeats, and scales up fragments of found images; at Chiswell Community Garden, he adds the first in a series of works referencing royalty, which also extends to the sculptural representation of human figures with limb difference. (Whilst present in Portland throughout the weekend Festival, the artist admitted his attention was sometimes distracted by the Summer Paralympic Games simultaneously closing in Paris.)
A stone’s throw from the English Channel, the waterfront location creates space for more subtle interpretations than the ubiquitous ‘dream’ of his exhibition titles. Barrangi collages place, time and memory, adding a deceptive look of history, by fading the printed vinyl before layering atop the Portland stone. With his ambiguous bodies, often represented with lost or missing arms and legs, we might speculate the othering of those journeying to Britain’s shores – and simultaneously, share in the artist’s positive outlook onto the horizon.
This series could as well make a permanent home at Portland Bill Lighthouse, the architectural motif which recurs most frequently in Barrangi’s work - and may provide opportunities for more in the region. One Night, One Dream, Life in the Lighthouse was part of Smeaton300, a programme to commemorate the Leeds-born – and likely the UK’s first - civil engineer, John Smeaton. Constructed in 1759, and renamed in 1882, Smeaton’s Tower on Plymouth Hoe likewise attracts visitors local and global; though a property of The Box, the city’s museum and art gallery, it has yet to be integrated within its contemporary arts landscape.
Plymouth, like Portland, could prove an interesting context for Barrangi, as he explores new locations for his site-specific work. With its history as a former colonial seaport, and contemporary status as a so-called ‘Dispersal City’, it is home to a predominantly white, working-class population, and growing migrant and refugee community. Portland has also served as a home for almost 600 temporary residents from the Bibby Stockholm. The Island’s intentions, though, are longer-term; though Barrangi’s sculpture leaves for his forthcoming exhibition in Nottingham, his murals remain, a continued presence on - and for - Portland. Visiting artists of different backgrounds also have expressed a sense of welcome, unsettling their stereotypes of working in rural regions, and the often extractive nature of cultural tourism.
Arts organisations should take note of b-side, and its careful, considered approach. Rocca Holly-Nambi and Sally Watkins, Director and Curator respectively, remark upon the Festival’s almost incidental concerns of migration, climate crises, and disability - themes which can be developed though collaboration with more activist, ‘strategic partners’ like Counterpoints Arts, and in different contexts. Informed by their work across contexts, Barrangi’s Nottingham exhibition will emphasise the impact of climate change on native animals and communities in southern Iran. Critically, though, these lived experiences might inform, but must not be used to define, either artist or audiences. Barrangi’s dreams, limitless in their scope, are a reminder.
Mohammad Barrangi: Dream of the Sea opens at b-side Festival 2024 in Portland in September 2024.
Mohammad Barrangi: The Last Rain in Wonderland is on view at New Art Exchange in Nottingham from 19 October 2024.
