By Kira Shannon
Contemporary artist Amir H. Fallah visited UCSB as part of the Spring 2025 Visiting Artist Speaker Series, where he shared his faceless, story-driven approach to portraiture.
Amir H. Fallah, a Los Angeles-based contemporary artist, has taken a new approach to painting portraits by depicting the life stories of his subjects. “I would almost do an archeological dig in their life,” he told a group of UC Santa Barbara students who gathered last week to hear about Fallah’s past works.
Fallah has painted many portraits over the last 12 years, none of which show the face of his subject. He creates portraits without including the typical elements we associate with them — including basics such as physical features.
Fallah was hosted by UCSB’s Art Department as part of the Spring 2025 Visiting Artist Speaker series, designed for artists to display their work and talk about its origins.
He linked his approach to portrait work to a feeling of being physically disconnected from his Iranian identity. “My interest in creating this alternative portrait was based in my own experience of having people look at me and misinterpret who I am,” he said.
Fallah’s goal for his work was to breathe new life into portraiture. He wanted the figure to be the least interesting part of the paintings. He continues to insert artifacts and aspects of cultural identity into his paintings, sculptures, and stained-glass work.
In his painting, “American Family,” Fallah incorporated objects he found in the subjects’ home, along with jewelry from Brazil and Iran, reflecting the mixed identities of the family.
In “Calling on the Past,” Fallah used his background in graphic design to design a layout, creating a hierarchy of visuals to include different imagery without overwhelming the painting.
“Silhouettes,” a series of sculptures Fallah created, explores the psychological interior of his subjects. These sculptures question the usual way portraits are done and break down ideas about how people are seen by others or shaped by their life experiences.
Fallah has worked with a team who specialized in stained glass work to turn his art into stained glass pieces. The piece titled “The Artifacts Left Behind,” took a group of 18 people more than four months to make, he said.
Fallah’s painting, “Break Down the Walls,” allowed him to express what it was like to migrate to America in the 1980s with only $72 among his family members. In the painting, he explores the emotional and social impact of the shift from a middle-class life to poverty, a transition brought on by the devastating effects of war in Iran.
Kira Shannon is a second-year UCSB student majoring in Film & Media Studies. She is a Web and Social Media Intern with the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.