The dolls and toys of Nafiseh Emran’s latest paintings depict a latent fright; a kind of apocalyptic space which is created in an imaginary world of toys. This world of toys and cartoon characters has been worked on and saturated to an extent that has changed their nature to opposite of what it was. This apocalyptic space belongs to a world formed by our imagination. As Francisco Goya mentions in the preface of his book comprising of a set of 80 prints, Los Caprichos, “The dream of wisdom creates demons.” On the other hand, the tradition of miniature and kaleidoscopic painting can be found in the middle ages depicting inferno or in Hieronymus Bosch or in the school of Sagha Khaneh in Iran. Hence, through repetition and multiplication of toys and cartoon characters, Nafiseh Emran has managed to contemporize these traditions. The toys and cartoon characters are placed next to each other cautiously and meticulously, whose companionship creates smaller stories. Repetition and multiplication leads her paintings into abstraction; abstract pictures of chaos where new laws and certain images create a place and position. One wonders whether the resulting chaos is a creature of our imagination? or is it a destiny expecting us ? or simply games played and forgotten ?

Dr. Behnam Kamrani