Pouran Jinchi: Fly Like Dandelions

Pouran Jinchi’s most recent series of paintings, ‘Fly Like Dandelions’ is an ode to movement, of the sun and its rays, of organic matter and seeds, and of people; a symbol of travel without borders. The dandelion is at the center of the series, a metaphor for the migration, displacement and circulation of people around the world due to conflict and the impact of climate change on the natural environment, and the meaning of these changes on communities that force them to move. The series began while the artist lived in New York City pre-Covid and continued during the pandemic. The paintings are inspired by studying ghost forests, arid land and devastation caused by climate change. Jinchi connects this to the language around weeds and the dandelion that is similar to that used to speak of immigrants. Having been born and raised in Iran, and having lived in the USA and more recently Portugal, Jinchi draws on her own experience as an immigrant in this body of work.

In the series ’Fly Like Dandelions’ Jinchi develops the trees and forests by marking the deconstructed Persian word for ‘trees’ repeatedly on the canvas until “legibility fades into form”.[1] The measure of the scale used to trace the base to the starting point of calligraphy is used by Jinchi to create the arid landscape as the markings. Dandelion seed pods transform into abstract calligraphic notation, floating across stark landscapes, a symbol of “dislocated but resilient migrants”.

Poetry has always been an inspiration, feeding Jinchi’s deep connection to script and language. In reference to Khayyam’s Rubaiyiat, Jinchi made the first of her series in which she developed a style or process of working to a pattern, engaging with the structure of language as a starting point, a methodology she has uniquely developed in all her work since. 

The relationship of each “zone” in the painting to the rest of the composition functions in a similar way that defines these relations in the ancient Persian miniatures, often suggesting fragments of symbolic figures in complicity or in tension. Although the works are absolute minimalism and abstractions, they easily provoke visions of density and multilayered stories as in the Shahnameh illustrations, especially with lines and shapes suggesting directions that define the compositions.  

The large landscapes in this series are a new approach for the artist, in which she plays with contrast and scale: many of the large canvases depict numerous small trees that look like swarms, of ants, people, armies, on the move. Other canvases focus on the soft white dandelion clocks against soft blue backgrounds, zoomed in on the clock heads in various states of unraveling, movement, floating across the canvas, like stars or beams of hope, clusters or groups of collectives finding meaning in voids of nothingness. In the larger context of art history, the dandelion, as the foundational element of these paintings, speaks to both the individual and the collective, relating to my interpretation of the idea of the one and the multiple in cultural abstraction. Here the concept of the artist also redefines a relationship to art as the trace of the artist’s vision and the real life and human condition that inspired this vision.

This is an expansive series from which a selection of larger works are on view at The Third Line. The stark landscapes depicted are imagined, referring to multiple references to nature, mountains and the land from which Jinchi draws inspiration. These mythical, curious looking landscapes could be considered everywhere and nowhere. While the series is the first to approach landscape painting, a connection can be seen with Jinchi’s black and white series Derakht.

The choice of colour pallete of the series is important too, holding its own language, references and patterns. It creates a universe provoking the viewers imagination to navigate between miniature mythologic landscapes and the contemporary paintings and pop culture. The dusty, muted dystopian tones reference the dark moments of climate change and crisis in which we live. The earthy tones of blues, browns, yellows and black are internationally emotive and melancholic representations of loss, extinction and desertion as caused by the climate emergency that also depicts a vision of our future decimated environment. 

The dandelion series is a hope and a wish ­– blowing the dandelions is an act of hope – and also the beginning of a chance for seeds to land where the winds and gravity take their light, semi-transparent antennas. When the artist was exploring painting styles, she naturally went back to calligraphy. After high-school in Iran, she went to the US for university to study engineering. It was an organic process to become an artist. Navigating these different systems and tracing her own path in the world through art, Jinchi’s practice moves between the old and the new, the near and the far, and the still and the moving figure. 

Humans, animals and organic matter have always moved through the history of time. But what makes these movements more difficult today are conflicts, geopolitical borders, and ideologic, economic plans that limit freedom of movement and exacerbate climate conditions.  ‘Fly Like dandelions’ can be read as calligraphical musical scores and notations of tiny and repetitive sounds to be whispered or sung softly for comfort, a lullaby for those on the move, forced or displaced elsewhere, or equally, for those who cannot and are left behind.