Ali Banisadr In conversation with Huma Bhabha

Text by Bella Bonner-Evans

Despite the apparent differences between their work—one is primarily a painter and the other a sculptor—artists Ali Banisadr and Huma Bhabha have recently formed a profound friendship. Having met earlier in 2023, the two artists have since hosted one another for studio visits and collectively uncovered the uncanny similarities between their practices: they both draw extensively on artefacts from ancient civilisations, deploy techniques of assemblage and collage, grapple with their diasporic experiences and identities and seek to examine the present as a product of the past and  a warning for the future. As migrants living in the United States, who have both carved out prestigious careers in their own right, Banisadr and Bhabha create almost futuristic works by harnessing the stories that have shaped their pasts. Having both grown up amongst ruins—Banisadr endured the realities of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, while Bhabha was greatly affected by urban decay in Pakistan—they are both charged with a passion for the preservation of ancient transglobal artistic histories, and have an acute awareness of the ramifications of current events and a desire to reconstruct notions of belonging, family and home through their artistic practices.