Security Inmate

Azad Gallery is proud to announce the opening of a solo exhibition by artist Eisa Choulandim, titled "Security Inmate". The exhibition will run from April 3 to April 8, 2025.

Eisa Choulandim, a former political prisoner, transforms simple, discarded cigarette packs into "open prisons" through his art. The exhibition features these cigarette boxes, which he used as canvases to expand his world beyond the confines of prison walls. The work is a powerful act of defiance, mocking the very structures of power and confinement that sought to suppress him. The paintings on these flattened cigarette packs disrupt the typical perspective, challenging the "perspective of power" and turning a fleeting, disposable object into a lasting work of art. By spreading these artworks for public view, both in the gallery and online, Choulandim effectively opens the prison gates and sends a message that "the wings of dreams and imagination cannot be closed, cut, or limited".

The art is a creative response to the artist's limited access to materials while incarcerated. The flattened boxes, with their four sharp, triangular cuts, create a recurring visual motif that symbolizes the constant threat and violence of prison. Choulandim uses a limited palette of colors, sometimes employing unconventional materials like beet juice and bleach solution, to reflect the minimal resources available to him. These works, ironed smooth with the heat of a kettle, become a testament to his creativity and resilience. Choulandim’s paintings blend the surreal with a traditional Persian miniature style, using multiple planes and perspectives in a single frame to blur the line between the inside and outside of the prison. The figures are fragmented, appearing on both sides of the bars, suggesting that for the imaginative artist, there is no real difference between the two.

Through distorted and broken forms—including hangman's nooses, meat grinders, and barbed wire—Choulandim narrates a painful reality. These harsh images are intertwined with his endless dreams and personal experiences, creating an eerie atmosphere that is at once a critique of external confinement and an exploration of internal self-policing