exhibition
VERLASSEN
Parvin Hakim, Behruz Heschmat, Payam Pourfallah, Josef Polleross
05/10 – 20/10/2025
curated by Negar Hakim & Azadeh Hariri
Opening: Saturday, October 4, 2025, 6 pm
with live musical performances by Mehran Arian, Shapour Khosrawiazar, and Sara Nadji
Thursday, October 16, 2025, 6 pm
Experiencing Abandonment, Observing Abandonment: An evening with Josef Polleross and Behruz Heschmat with live musical performances
Monday, October 20, 2025, 6 pm
Finissage: Tracing Abandoned Places in Vienna – with Lukas Arnold
Venue: philomena+ project room, Heinestraße 40, 1020 Vienna
Payam Pourfallah, A gift from a kid
Deserted spaces touch us in silent and deeply moving ways. They speak of lives once lived – of voices that faded, of hands that left traces, and of moments inscribed in walls, floors, and landscapes.
What remains when people leave?
What do we feel when we must abandon a place – whether through necessity, change, or personal loss?
This exhibition invites viewers to engage with the visible and invisible dimensions of abandonment. It presents drawings, photography, film, and installation-based works by artists from Iran, Austria, and the Iranian-Austrian diaspora, each approaching the theme from unique aesthetic and biographical perspectives.
Whether abandoned neighborhoods, dried-up riverbeds, derelict cinemas, or natural environments shaped by destruction, the works trace the presence of grief, memory, and transformation. They allow spaces to speak that might otherwise fall silent.
Abandonment is not mere absence – it is a state suspended between forgetting and hope, between loss and renewal.
artists
(*1963 in Isfahan, Iran) studied painting at Azad University in Korasgan and has been active in the Iranian contemporary art scene since 1996, exhibiting widely in Tehran and Isfahan. Her artistic practice—spanning painting, drawing, and photography—is closely tied to the desert margins surrounding Isfahan. Her work explores themes of place, architectural heritage, and ways of life shaped by arid climates. One phase of her career focused on the Jolfa district, a site of cultural convergence. More recently, her attention has turned to environmental change, particularly the desiccation of the Zayanderood River. In minimalist, precise visual compositions, her photographs explore tensions between movement and stillness, hope and loss, tracing emotional residues within the urban landscape. Hakim’s work reflects both the psychological effects of ecological crises and the often-overlooked needs of urban communities. Her artistic gaze seeks out visual signs that offer a quiet, concentrated portrait of her native city.
BEHRUZ HESHMAT
(*1953 in Iran, lives and works in Vienna) is a renowned Iranian-Austrian sculptor whose artistic practice is deeply rooted in his personal life story. Since 1983, he has lived and worked in exile in Vienna, following political and social circumstances that forced him to leave his homeland. Heschmat began his formal artistic education at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, one of Europe’s leading art institutions. From 1976 to 1982, he studied under the prominent sculptor Wander Bertoni, whose guidance provided him with a solid technical foundation and had a lasting impact on his creative development. Heschmat’s work is characterized by a profound engagement with themes such as abandonment, solitude, and the darker aspects of the human condition. His sculptures reflect existential depth, combining poetic imagery with critical reflection on memory, displacement, and identity.
PAYAM POURAFALLAH
(*1988 in Isfahan, Iran) is a cartoonist, caricaturist, and visual artist. In his work he engages with themes of abandonment, marginalization, and the psychological effects of social neglect. His works combine images of urban decay with emotional depth and are marked by a distinctive style that fuses satirical caricature with the language of contemporary art. He is the director of the Isfahan Cartoonists’ House and is actively involved in various cultural and artistic initiatives. His work has been widely published in both national and international media, presented in numerous exhibitions, and recognized with several awards. Five solo exhibitions across different Iranian cities have received broad acclaim from both audiences and critics. Payam Pourfallah’s practice is defined by originality, visual clarity, and cultural significance. Through ongoing experimentation across media and formats, he consistently pushes the boundaries between caricature, illustration, and contemporary art.
JOSEF POLLEROSS
(*1963 in the Waldviertel region, lives and works in Vienna) is a cosmopolitan artist who has also lived in New York, Cairo, and Bangkok. He is a master of various genres within both artistic and journalistic photography. In the 1980s, he launched a remarkable career as a photojournalist from New York in collaboration with the photo agency JB-Pictures—an exceptional path by Austrian standards. His photographs on political and social issues have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Life, Newsweek, Time, Geo, Stern, and Der Spiegel. Since 2014, he has undertaken several journeys to Iran, where he has documented abandoned places. Josef Polleross’s photographic vision combines documentary precision with poetic sensibility, revealing processes of disappearance as well as traces of lived history. In his recent work, he explores questions of identity, memory, and cultural transformation through the aesthetics of abandonment.
Parvin Hakim, Behruz Heschmat, Payam Pourfallah, Josef Polleross, Verlassen, photos: Sam Bajoughli
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