In the intricate and multi-layered space of contemporary Iranian art, the exhibition “Palimento,” inaugurated on 19 December 2025 at Nian Gallery, emerges as a significant and thoughtprovoking event. Curated with precise and informed vision by Rosa Matinfar and featuring over forty works by Behdad Najafi Asadollahi, a painter and new media artist, the exhibition presents a conceptual project born of four years of research and sustained creativity. At its deepest level, “Palimento” is an investigation into the dialectical relationship between media, collective memory, and human emotion, a relationship of vital importance within the socio,historical context of Iran today.
The exhibition’s curator, Rosa Matinfar, brings an academic background in fine arts from the University of Tehran and extensive experience in curation, criticism, and art advisory, with a particular focus on the art of the MENASA region. She has orchestrated an exhibition that is, above all, a coherent “conceptual mapping.” As the founder of the artistic platform “Matin House,” her theoretical knowledge and analytical insight are evident in the narrative framework she has constructed for Behdad Najafi’s works. Each piece complements the next, together forming a grand narrative. Her choice of the concept “Palimento”; a brilliant amalgamation of “palimpsest” (multi-layered texts) and “pentimento” (the re-emergence of hidden layers in painting), is the key to this visual world. This choice signifies a concern that goes beyond mere collection; it is a desire to create a space where history, media, and feeling intermingle, actively inviting the viewer to interpret.On the other hand, Behdad Najafi Asadollahi, an artist with a distinguished national and international profile and the recipient of numerous accolades, demonstrates the peak maturity of his visual language in this collection. His language is one of color and texture, but here these elements reside on an unconventional ground: the pages of newspapers, particularly those that have ceased publication, becoming “silenced voices.” Through skillful and rich layering of abstract colors and forms upon these texts, Najafi performs a dual act. He simultaneously obscures and marginalizes the official, seemingly definitive narrative of the media, while preserving signs such as headlines, logos, and page layouts, allowing the distinct whisper of that very narrative to live on beneath the layers of paint.
This confrontation is the central core of the works’ aesthetics; each canvas is a scene of struggle between forgetting and remembering, between the voice of mass media and the artist’s inner voice; an emotional reaction, from grief and anxiety to joy and anger, to the consumption of news. This process itself mirrors the lived experience of the Iranian audience confronting a deluge of information and the media’s decisive role in shaping perception and feeling.
Beyond personal expression, “Palimento” transforms into a social project where the “archive” is not a frozen set of documents but a living, shared body. Each newspaper page submerged under layers of paint is like a collective memory that society wishes to forget or reinterpret; and every intervention by a visitor on the “Rewriting Room” acts as a word added to the collective narrative. Here, art becomes a catalyst for a silent dialogue between generations: yesterday’s newspapers speak in today’s language of color, inviting tomorrow’s gaze to reread and record. This process turns the exhibition into a forum for experiencing “active memory” a memory that not only records the past but, with the help of present hands, creates it anew for the future.
The exhibition, however, does not confine itself to two-dimensional paintings. A vital and complementary component is the interactive installation titled “Rewriting Room,” a tangible and participatory manifestation of the exhibition’s core concepts. In this space, the audience is drawn out of the passive role of spectator and becomes a “co-conspirator” and “co-author” of the work. The possibility of touching, writing, and marking on a wall covered in newspapers provides a tangible, collective experience of the concept of pentimento. This action serves as a beautiful metaphor for the perpetually unfinished structure of memory and history, which is always being completed and rewritten with new inscriptions and interpretations. This participatory approach not only underscores the depth of the curator’s thought in designing an inclusive experience but also affirms the role of art as a space for collective dialogue.
In summary, the exhibition “Palimento” through the collaboration of an analytical curator and a distinctive artist, stands as an artistic statement on the complexities of the present moment. By referencing theories of intertextuality and the metaphor of the palimpsest, it reminds us that no narrative, be it historical or media, is neutral or final. Every truth stands on the shoulders of prior layers that can emerge at an unexpected moment. By transforming the mundane, ephemeral material of news into a medium for philosophical and aesthetic contemplation, “Palimento” offers a possibility for pause and re-reading in a world saturated with noise and haste. This exhibition is a brilliant example of contemporary art’s capacity to address society’s ontological issues with an innovative and impactful language, and its presence at Nian Gallery represents a valuable opportunity for the art community and enthusiasts alike.
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Behdad Najafi’s newspaper paintings masterfully blend erasure and memory, with the interactive “Rewriting Room” making viewers co-authors of collective narrative; a brilliant exploration of media and truth.
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