Hey Iran! originates from a specific historical object: an American political button produced during the 1979–1981 Tehran hostage crisis. Following the Iranian Revolution, 52 U.S. diplomats and citizens were held hostage inside the American Embassy in Tehran for 444 days. In the United States, this event generated a wave of popular political imagery—pins, posters, cartoons, and slogans—that translated geopolitical confrontation into mass culture. One of the most widely circulated motifs was a button depicting a cartoon mouse raising its middle finger under the caption “Hey Iran!”, combining national symbolism, pop iconography, and political provocation.
This object is not treated in the painting as irony or nostalgia. It is approached as evidence of how political conflict enters everyday visual language and becomes normalized through repetition. The button condensed fear, anger, and defiance into a single, easily consumable image—an early example of how global politics could be simplified, distributed, and emotionally charged through popular media.
Painted in 2019, Hey Iran! revisits this historical moment at a time when U.S.–Iran relations were again escalating. The withdrawal of the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), renewed sanctions, and rising regional tensions marked a return to confrontational rhetoric. In this climate, the painting functioned less as commentary on the past and more as a warning about recurrence: the reactivation of unresolved political patterns through familiar visual symbols.
The visible surface of Hey Iran! reproduces the logic of the original button: a simplified, pop-cultural image designed to be instantly legible. Beneath this surface, however, the painting contains a hidden infrared portrait that is invisible to the naked eye and can only be revealed through IR visualization. This concealed image depicts Donald Trump near the end of his first presidential term, echoing the gesture implied by the historical slogan but translating it into a contemporary political figure.
This double structure establishes the core mechanism of the Double Portraits series. Each work operates on two levels:
– a public, mediated layer shaped by propaganda, mass imagery, and political spectacle;
– a concealed layer that requires technological mediation to become visible, referencing surveillance, intelligence, and military imaging systems.
The use of infrared is not metaphorical decoration. It reflects a world in which political reality is increasingly interpreted through technological filters that are inaccessible to most citizens. Decisions with global consequences are often made in environments where visibility is asymmetrical—some images are broadcast endlessly, while others remain hidden, classified, or technically unreadable.
Since the painting’s completion, events in Iran have given Hey Iran! renewed urgency. Large-scale protests, triggered by systemic repression and economic pressure, have again placed Iran at the center of global attention. Statements by Trump warning Iranian authorities against violently suppressing protests create a direct contemporary echo of the confrontational posture embedded in the original button. The gesture that once circulated as popular provocation now reappears as a political signal with real consequences.
In this sense, Hey Iran! functions as a temporal bridge. It connects the hostage crisis of the late Cold War era, the sanctions-driven conflicts of the 2010s, and the present moment of social unrest. The painting does not claim to predict events, but it demonstrates how certain images persist, resurface, and regain force when political conditions align.
The broader Double Portraits series extends this logic beyond a single geopolitical case. Each painting examines figures of power whose public image has been flattened into symbols, slogans, or caricatures, while their actual political agency operates elsewhere—often invisibly. By pairing a highly legible surface with a hidden infrared portrait, the works insist on a gap between representation and reality.
Politically, the series is not partisan. It does not advocate positions or propose solutions. Instead, it documents a structural condition of contemporary power: leaders are consumed as images, while their decisions unfold in domains that resist direct visibility. The paintings treat this condition as neither accidental nor new, but as intensified by modern media systems.
The decision to structure Hey Iran! as a collective gift rather than a sale reinforces this framework. The artwork is not fragmented visually or conceptually; it remains a single object. What becomes collective is the gesture itself—the public act of participation, recorded transparently, without ownership or financial return. This mirrors the way political responsibility is often diffused across populations while decision-making remains centralized.
Taken together, Hey Iran! and the Double Portraits series position painting as a tool for historical compression. They bring distant events into proximity, reveal continuities across decades, and expose how symbols migrate from one crisis to another. The works do not resolve these tensions. They preserve them—layered, visible and invisible—insisting that understanding power today requires reading both what is shown and what is deliberately obscured.