Bobak Kabood

Drawing upon ancestral narratives and the symbolism of the bitter almond tree, Kabood’s practice interrogates themes of marginalisation, unseen labour, and the courage of unbelonging.  

Kabood’s paintings emerge from the soil of personal and collective memory. Central to the exhibition is the parable of the bitter almond tree – a recurring motif drawn from his grandmother’s tales. This tree, thriving in drought yet trembling at loneliness, becomes a potent metaphor for resilience amidst societal neglect. Kabood’s canvases translate this narrative into visceral imagery: figures stripped of identity hover in spatial suspension; roots claw through pigment; almond blossoms bleed into abstract voids.

For Kabood, painting is neither decorative spectacle nor political manifesto. It is, profoundly, "an imagistic tool that connects him to himself – lifting the lid from his heart, stirring its contents, and drawing answers from its deepest cavities." His work rejects performative sweetness, instead embracing the generative power of bitterness. As the artist asserts: "Painting taught him not to fear his errors. Taught him not to sell his existence. It revealed his bitterness. And later, it revealed that if he is bitter, he need not strain to be sweet."

Working primarily with oil and found objects, Kabood employs crosshatching and tonal gradations to sculpt light from shadow. His surfaces evoke weathered bark and cracked earth, while negative space breathes with absence. The exhibition also features sculptural installations – assemblages of "uncomprehended bodies" – extending his meditation on the weight of invisibility.