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Auction for Amir H. Fallah’s inaugural NFT, Immortal, starts at 3pm EST on March 11.

by Shana Nys Dambrot 

Amir H. Fallah is an artist who works primarily in painting and sculpture, and for whom narrative, metaphor, symbolism and allegory are always centered. When it comes to his imagery, multiple layers of simultaneous meanings is his happy place. His best known works have been a series of portraits, in which the sitters are obscured by lavish textiles draped and wrapped around their heads and faces, but whose personalities and life stories are communicated instead by assemblies of their most precious personal effects. To this almost baroque-level maximalist foundation, Fallah has been adding borrowed and invoked imagery from popular visual culture and significant botany, the better to contextualize his storylines. 

His most recent body of work has been built around ideas of parenting/fatherhood and the ways in which culture, identity, philosophy, wisdom and unique personal histories are passed down, parent to child. When it came time to mint his first NFT (Non-Fungible Token), it was only natural that Fallah would thus further take the occasion to critique and contextualize the platform/medium within these same priorities.  

‘Immortal’ – began as an acrylic painting, a portrait of his son, veiled in fabric and holding a polychromatic skull. In its symbology of DNA, mortality, memory and knowledge it is totally connected to his practice. It also questions the meandering afterlife of ideas, positing the skull as a vessel of assembled consciousness, not unlike the blockchain itself. 

Fallah made sure the painting fit within the 16:9 aspect ratio of high-definition displays; and when the NFT is minted, the painting will be destroyed by fire in a video unlocked by the purchase of the tokenized work of art. Fallah’s cheeky details are reflexive nods to the NFT dynamic, potentially as much a vessel of collective culture and knowledge as consciousness itself, as represented by the skull.  

For what it’s worth, there’s a long and storied history of artists burning their own art work, for many reasons — performative shock value, critiques of market-driven preciousness and the cult of scarcity, interrogations of the idea of original objects, and even more spiritual gestures of cleansing and gestalt scrubbing. John Baldessari once took his whole archive to a crematorium to signal a major shift in the core of his practice. 

NFT it’s worth noting, is not a medium per se — not in the same way as paint or clay. It is an infrastructure and a liminal space of as-yet unlimited possibilities. But is it a liberator, a disruptor, a destroyer, a promise of incorruptibility, a version of immortality? We just don’t know yet. However its encoded, electric, decentralized body has a lot in common with DNA, and as we build this brave new world for our children to inhabit, just like our DNA they’ll take our stories with them to that place. 

Burn To Mint, An Interview With Amir H. Fallah  

How did you first learn about NFTs? 

My introduction to NFTs was through my interest in Bitcoin. I’d been aware of it for several years and knew several friends who were involved in investing in BTC and other coins. Around Christmas I started reading more about it and decided to purchase some. Over the last two years I have become friends with Shahin Tabassi and Dan Nguyen, two art collectors who collect my work and also are involved with crypto and NFTs. We began discussing NFTs regularly and the possibilities and implications that they could have within the contemporary art world. Our discussions have been great because the NFT space is so new and the possibilities of its impacts on contemporary art are so large. It’s been exciting to discuss these ideas with two friends who are steeped in both worlds. 

When and how did you come up with the concept to burn your first NFT? 

Shahin and Dan are interesting because they collect both physical art and NFTs. During our discussions, we talked about what it means conceptually to create an NFT from a physical artwork. Currently, there are not many people who have their hands in both worlds so their insights and opinions were extremely helpful with the conceptualization of this piece.  

I don’t create digital works so the concept of making a painting by hand and then tokenizing it felt problematic. What would I do with the original work? If there is a physical version of the painting then is the NFT truly the artwork or does it function as a print of sorts? I knew that I wanted the NFT to be a portrait of my son and my recent work thematically deals with themes of fatherhood, legacy, and how parents pass on their values and belief systems to their children. As we discussed these themes in the work it became clear that burning the painting would not only render the NFT the original work but would directly speak to the ideas of immortality and legacy as it pertains to digital works as well as the desires of parents to pass on their belief systems, values, and their DNA to their children. 

What is the significance of burning the paintings? 

There were several reasons to burn the piece. There’s the obvious reference to token burning where you permanently remove tokens from circulation to reduce supply. By physically burning the piece, it immediately renders the tokenized version the original work. As a painter, I’m interested in the implications that NFTs have on physical artworks. I like the idea of challenging notions of what a painting can and can’t be. I still think of my work as a painting even though it exists on the blockchain. 

I also liked the connection between my piece and “Cremation Project”, an iconic work by the late artist John Baldessari. In 1970 John took 100 of his abstract paintings to a crematorium and burned them. For him this performative piece marked his departure from traditional painting to a conceptual artist and led him on the path to create the groundbreaking work that he is now known for. In my piece “Immortal” I’m also marking a shift. Unlike Baldessari I am not leaving behind painting. Rather I think of this piece as a way to mark this moment in time where we are going through a deadly pandemic. I am raising a young child, and thinking about what kind of person i want him to grow up to be and what kind of world we are leaving him. This last year has been life changing in many ways and I don’t think things will ever be the same. I’m sure it was scary for John to destroy so many years of work and start an unknown Journey. Society today is also going through major political, environmental and social changes/challenges. There are many questions about how we come out of this time of pandemics and social unrest. It is an unknown voyage of sorts with many questions and not a lot of answers.  

I also love the reference to Baldessari because I had the fortune to study with him for 3 years in the graduate art program at UCLA. I knew that in many ways he was not fond of painting but John always took great care to be attentive and supportive of the young artists he mentored. He was one of the biggest artists alive while he was my professor and certainly didn’t need the job for income. Rather he was excited to be around and challenged by the work of his students. I’d like to think that “Immortal” pays homage to him in some way as his generosity both as a teacher and artist will ensure that his work and teachings are Immortalized for generations to come.

Explain the significance of the title “Immortal” for your work. 

The painting is of my young son holding a skull model that comes apart like a puzzle of sorts. My son is 5 years old and has an incredible fascination with the human body and anatomy. He knows more about anatomy than most adults and walks around telling everyone that he wants to be a doctor when he grows up. He is looking at the skull which historically is a symbol of mortality. I wanted the figure to be staring down at it as a reminder of our collective mortality, questioning why we are alive and how to make the most of the time we have. 

Once I became a parent I started thinking heavily about my own mortality and how one day I won’t be around my child. You have this tiny human that you’ve created and take care of for years and then one day they are an adult and don’t need you to survive. Parents eventually grow old and die but their kids are left to carry on the family name and legacy. This process renders you immortal in a sense. Not only are you leaving behind your DNA but you are leaving behind parts of your personality, your beliefs, mannerisms, and your values. All of these aspects are embedded into your child and will be passed down to their child. You become immortalized through your children.  

Can you talk about your painting process and why you conceal your subjects identities with fabric? 

All of my paintings start with a photo shoot. For each image I go to a person’s home and have an informal conversation with them. We walk from room to room in their home and discuss their family, their background, what they do for a living and so on. I’m also taking photos of their belongings during this process. These photographs and stories are brought back to the studio where I begin to create a collage, which will be the basis for the paintings. I never paint someone’s physical likeness. I think of the body as a generic shell. I prefer to describe someone by their history, the objects they surround themselves in and the clothes that they wear. The paintings end up being a collection of symbols that the viewer has to decode. 

As a traditional artist, how do you see NFTs impacting the way artists will create works? 

I truly believe that NFTs will have a major impact on the artworld. From being able to trace the provenance of a work to acting as a Certificate of Authenticity to giving artists a percentage of sales. NFTs will also open up many avenues for sound artists, performers, and conceptual artists who traditionally have not had a way to monetize their artworks. The challenge will be to get the art world to adapt as the business side of the art world tends to be very conservative and set in its ways.

Why did you choose SuperRare as the initial platform to launch your NFT? 

SuperRare is one of the only platforms that provides editorial content about the artists they work with. This is especially important with a new medium of art as it gives context to the work and allows viewers to learn more about the artists’ intentions and meaning behind the work. I also think that having the artists themselves mint the work is important in that it ensures that the work is created and owned by the artist from inception.