The Artwork
Two of Me
2026
72”x52.5”
Acrylic on aluminum
Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration (1st floor lobby)
April 18 – May 17, 2026
Two of Me presents the body as both structure and story—its surface a living archive of change. Viewers encounter a figure assembled from a personal visual lexicon spanning the ancient and contemporary, the Eastern and Western, the intimate and the public. These references are reduced to silhouettes—deconstructed traces that merge, fracture, and recombine into a body in constant flux. What emerges is a dynamic portrait of how experience, both joyful and painful, becomes embedded within oneself.
As one moves around the sculpture, the figure shifts, revealing multiple selves coexisting at once. The work considers perception and self-presentation—how we construct, perform, and protect identity. A dense botanical pattern wraps the form, functioning as both armor and skin, suggesting regeneration, resilience, and interconnectedness.
At its core, Two of Me speaks to duality: the ongoing negotiation between a person’s many selves, histories, and desires. It reflects the immigrant experience of living between two cultures—holding past and present, assimilation and inheritance, in constant tension. The sculpture becomes both mirror and metaphor, honoring transformation as a fundamental condition of being human.
Amir H. Fallah (b. 1979, Tehran, Iran) creates paintings, murals, sculptures, and installation that explore systems of representation embedded in the history of Western art. His ornate environments combine the visual vocabularies of painting and collage to deconstruct traditional notions of identity, while simultaneously defying expectations of portraiture by removing or obscuring the central figure. In many of his works, the absence of the sitter’s likeness is replaced with a broader representation of personhood –one that spans time and culture and is articulated through a network of symbols and imagery. The work questions not only the historical role of portraiture but also the cultural systems we use to define one another.
Fallah received his BFA in Fine Art and Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and his MFA in Painting from the University of California, Los Angeles. Fallah is the founder and former creative director of the art and design publication Beautiful/Decay (1996–2013). He participated in the 9th Sharjah Biennial in 2009 and is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant (2015), the COLA Individual Artist Fellowship (2020), and an Artadia Award (2020).
His work is held in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; de Young Museum; Birmingham Museum of Art; Jorge M. Pérez Collection; Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art; McEvoy Foundation for the Arts; Nerman Museum; SMART Museum of Art at the University of Chicago; Davis Museum; The Microsoft Collection; Cerritos College Public Art Collection; and the Los Angeles County Department of Arts & Culture, among other public and private collections. Fallah lives and works in Los Angeles.