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Walking into the BCMA’s historic Rotunda on a winter day, one encounters a half-scale marble sculpture of a partially disrobed young man, his pale stone back bathed in sunlight piercing through the building’s original front door. Gazing gracefully up toward the imposing dome, designed by architect Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909) in 1894, the remarkably lifelike sculpture by London-based Iranian artist (b. 1973) has a serene if enigmatic presence in the space. The figure enacts a front-facing pose with one foot slightly ahead of the other, one arm to the side, and the other behind his back. The highly detailed carving conveys an evidently young, male-presenting, athletic physique as well as the convincing illusion of fabric wrapping around his body, of socks gathering at his ankles, of jeans and sneakers piling at his feet. Questions may begin to form in our minds: Has this figure taken off his own clothes, or have they been stripped from him? Has he assumed this pose of his own will, or has he been compelled into it? We may look to the title to provide some clarification—Action 247: At 11:45 am Friday 27 June 2003—yet despite its promise of information it delivers only more ambiguities.   

Aramesh engages with a long tradition of public figural sculpture—which are often life-size or larger than life-size—but deliberately reduces the scale to encourage us to come in closely. The figure’s placement on a pedestal still requires that we look up at his face. As with many of works by Aramesh, Action 247 is both politically and erotically charged. As reference material, Aramesh consults reportage imagery found online, in the news, and other archives that document conflict and imprisonment around the world from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Works like Action 247 are not a transcription of a particular event but rather a reinterpretation, involving several stages of mediation through a reenactment by a (non-professional) studio model, then through the artist’s own photographs and three-dimensional scans, and finally by way of the marble sculpture. According to email correspondence with Aramesh’s studio, Action 247 refers to two unrelated circumstances that unfolded in Iraq and Nigeria, both in 2003. This may readily call to our minds the United States’ invasion of Iraq that year or violence related to Nigeria’s federal and state elections.

The sculpture holds in tension the indignity of having one’s clothes forcibly removed, on the one hand, and the idealization and otherworldliness suggested by the light-gray marble, on the other. Also held in tension are the notions of violence and desire, a tension that, as the artist himself has noted, carries through Greco-Roman sculpture from classical antiquity as well as European devotional and mythological sculpture from the Middle Ages and later. In a published interview, the artist explains his thinking:

I wanted to look at the representation or the iconography of suffering throughout Western art history. Suffering is a state of mind that cannot really be visualised, but the depiction of the suffering of iconic religious figures as noble martyrdom in Western art has established a view of how suffering may look like. I have used the same classical style and materials to commemorate the ordinary people who are the martyrs of our time. The dates in the titles of my artworks are precise and significant. But by keeping the geography ambiguous, I want to invite viewers to construct their own narrative about the work.^[1] 

Violence as a caesura or a rupture to the typical rhythms of everyday life informs Aramesh’s practice. Action 247 stands as just such a caesura in the Museum’s Rotunda. With a dome that recalls the Pantheon in Rome, flanked by four murals with allegorical representations of Rome by Elihu Vedder (1836–1923), Venice by Kenyon Cox (1856–1919), Athens by John La Farge (1835–1910), and Florence by Abbott Thayer (1849–1921), the space and its accompanying iconographic program broadcast the role the United States sought to position itself as the inheritor of the Western artistic tradition. The sculpture stands directly in front of the building’s dedicatory cartouche, which occupies the center of the room and reads “To be used for art purposes only.” Although crafted from Carrara marble, the iconic material of the Western tradition, Action 247 calls attention to the ideological framing of the space as a “temple for art” and the histories of violence and domination on which such ideological constructions are founded. 

In early February 2025, Aramesh came to ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ College to join in conversation with Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow Sean Kramer, open to the public and campus community, during which Aramesh expounded on the themes that drive his intermedial practice and ruminated on the complex notions of artistic responsibility and consent in representing violence and subjugation. The following day, Aramesh joined the class led by Assistant Professor of English Zahir Janmohamed, “Writing the History, Politics, and Culture of Food,” which yielded an insightful discussion around how both art and food can speak to contested socio-political discourses and historical processes. 

Many thanks to Reza Aramesh, his studio, and colleagues Hormoz Hematian and Sam Roknivand at Zaal Gallery for their partnership in bringing this work into the BCMA collection.

For more on Irreplaceable You: Personhood and Dignity in Art, 1980s to Now, please join us on Saturday, April 26, 2025, for a colloquium at the ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ College Museum of Art that will convene artists, curators, and scholars who think through the broader aesthetic and ethical implications of “personhood” and “dignity” in a contemporary visual world saturated with imagery meant to shock or dismay. The event will be free and open to all.

Irreplaceable You: Personhood and Dignity in Art, 1980s to Now, is on view at the ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ College Museum of Art through June 1, 2025. More information, including images and installation views, related the exhibition is available online.

[1] Reza Aramesh, quoted in “A Study of Human Suffering during Wars,” The Gulf News, December 21, 2016: https://gulfnews.com/entertainment/arts-culture/a-study-of-human-suffering-during-wars-1.1949691