Identity Mixed Media Sculpture

This mixed media sculpture captures a passionate affair, illustrating how desire can distort love into a self-serving pursuit

about this mixed media sculpture

Identity mixed media sculpture from the “Mania” series by Sara Rahanjam unfolds a fractured narrative of love and transformation. It draws inspiration from Iranian painting and literature, especially symbolic Gol o Morgh motifs of flower and bird.

The composition merges a rooster head with a human body, layered with intricate painted surfaces and symbolic imagery. This hybrid form blurs boundaries between instinct, emotion, and cultural memory within a surreal visual language.

Rather than idealized purity, the work reimagines love as desire shaped by material longing and emotional distortion. The beloved becomes both presence and projection, where affection shifts into self-centered emotional tension. Connection appears intact on the surface, yet dissolves into competing internal drives and unmet longing.

The rooster head introduces instinct, pride, and vigilance into the language of romantic symbolism. The human body becomes a canvas of narrative painting, carrying traces of myth, desire, and conflict. Together, they form a dual identity suspended between animal impulse and human consciousness.

Artistic Concept

This sculpture portrays love as a complex and conflicted emotion. The once spiritual and transcendent connection between lovers is replaced by a more earthly and sensual desire, where both the lover and the beloved pursue their individual longings, even as they remain superficially connected.

Gol o Morgh motifs traditionally symbolize pure and elevated love in Iranian visual culture. Here, they are reinterpreted to reflect the erosion of affection into self-interest.
The bird, once a symbol of sacrifice, no longer yields to the flower as before.
Instead, both figures exist within a cycle of competing desire and emotional imbalance.

This tainted love departs from ideals of sacrifice, devotion, and unconditional affection.
It reveals a more volatile emotional reality, shaped by longing and contradiction.
Beneath its poetic surface, love becomes a self-serving pursuit rather than harmony.

about the artist

Sara Rahanjam is an Iranian sculptor born in 1984 in Lahijan, Iran. She graduated in Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran. Her practice spans bronze, fiberglass, and mixed media sculpture, often merging classical craftsmanship with contemporary conceptual language.

Her work has been widely exhibited across Iran and internationally, with solo exhibitions including Stranger 2024, and earlier presentations at Seyhoun Gallery and Etemad Gallery in Tehran. She has participated in more than 50 group exhibitions across Europe, the United States, and Asia.

Recent international presentations include exhibitions in Paris, London, Chicago, and San Francisco, as well as participation in major events such as the 5th Beijing Biennial and the Sculpture Biennial for Urban Space in Tehran.

Her sculptural language often explores women’s identity, social constraint, and emotional resistance within contemporary society. Through figurative bronze forms and symbolic compositions, she transforms personal and collective experience into poetic, sculptural narratives.

Rahanjam’s works are part of private and institutional collections internationally, reflecting her growing presence in contemporary sculpture and collectible design discourse.

Collection

View Sara Rahanjam's Dubai collection of available artworks here 

Copyright

This sculpture is one of a kind original therefore, all copyrights & reproduction rights are reserved by the artist