Fierce Femme Padideh Aghanoury’s Dark and Emotional Approach To Art

Femme artist Padideh Aghanoury, is more than just a local music-loving DJ and writer.  She spends a lot of her time painting, creating 3D sculptures, and writing poems that invoke a sense of otherworldliness. It is anything but mundane. Inspired by the darker side of life, her work explores the nitty-gritty aspects of mental illness that haunts so many. Padideh sat down with OFM to talk more about what inspires her and where she plans to move forward from here.

Hi Padideh, Thank you for taking the time to chat! Can you tell me a bit about yourself as an artist and how you got started?

I’ve always drawn, but I didn’t really start painting and seriously making art until college. My good friend Maggie Langford, who is an extremely talented oil painter, was just very encouraging, sat down and helped me explore different mediums, and just really made art feel more accessible. I always felt like in order to be a good artist you had to be really good at realism, like painting vases full of flowers and stuff, and I don’t like that. That’s not me. It was really nice to have that other person be like ‘Hey, you can just do whatever you want.’

What inspires you and what do you want your art to say?

That’s a good question, I think I’m really inspired and compelled to make art about things that are grotesque and unsettling. I kind of like creepy stuff, horror films, and otherworldly stuff like giving plants sentience by giving them faces. I really like drawing eyes and a lot of my paintings incorporate this feeling of being watched.

My mom doesn’t really like it! I painted a bunch of flowers, and I put eyeballs in the middle of them and she was just like ‘I really like the flowers, but why did you have to put eyeballs in them?’ Haha, why not? I’ve always been trying to break down structures and reimagine faces. I really like drawing stuff that’s from a different perspective and breaking down what we’re even looking at. It’s art made by a human and not this hyperrealistic replication of what society says is beautiful. 

I paint a lot when I’m sad and 2016-2018 were some of the darkest years of my life. I was kind of agoraphobic during that time and didn’t really leave the house except for going to classes at CU Denver. All I did was paint and so a lot of my paintings are really dark, with lots of dripping things, and tears. I really like that kind of expression because when I’m happy, I’m going out and doing things with my friends; I’m not brooding at home. So when I’m sad, depressed, or angry, that’s when I’m sitting down and working. There’s this idea of romanticizing the tortured artist and it’s like, ‘NO! I hate that,’ and if it were a choice, I would never have depression or anxiety. So it’s only very recently in my life that I’ve been able to finally start channeling my depression in a way that is a little healthier and less self-destructive. 

What piece are you most proud of?

I have this really big piece in my living room that I did that I’m really proud of! It’s of a person kind of like melting, like their face kind of melting, and there’s four faces hovering over them looking down and grinning kind of scary.  It was inspired by being around people while on mushrooms and just generally being anxious around people where all you want to do is melt into the ground and disappear. I’ve had a lot of people say ‘Oh my God, I love this’ Or ‘I hate this. I don’t want to look at it.’ I think that some of the people who are more blunt or just dismissive of my work are very lucky in the way that maybe they haven’t dealt with these severe and debilitating mental illnesses. And the people that do get it, know exactly what my art is trying to say and they’ve maybe experienced those same feelings too. It’s comforting knowing that someone else has maybe experienced those same feelings. 

Is painting your main medium?

For the most part, I stick to painting. I started drawing and added on painting from there. I also really love to do acrylic and chalk pastel without drawing. That’s been about the bulk of what I’ve done since. Now I’ve started exploring other completely different mediums like glass and silicone with rubber. I also went to an estate sale with a friend and we just got a bunch of antique junk. We found a bunch of old cameras and a really cool super 8 camera that had a bunch of pieces missing. I kind of just took it apart and started creating more of a 3D piece. So that’s kind of what I’m trying to shift into. I love painting, but I’m starting to feel a little bit more limited by it. 

Do you collaborate with other artists or is this something you do more on your own?

I generally do work more on my own, just because I’m by myself a lot of the time. Even before the pandemic I kind of like to be alone. But I do also really really enjoy making art with other people but not in any official capacity.  I lived with this artist who has now become a really good friend of mine named Hayley Barker. She does really amazing installations and is someone who got me into that kind of work. We started doing work together decorating our own living room with installations and that kind of turned into doing installations for some of our friends who are DJs in the area. 

That’s awesome! Did you do any of that around clubs or places around the city?

Yeah absolutely! I’ve decorated RiNo a couple of times for a few different warehouse parties. We’ve also decorated Middle Man once when we had a DJ event there. It’s usually the events that I’m Dj-ing I’ll also decorate. That’s generally what it has been. 

Do you have any projects you are working on now that our readers can go see?

Above Ground Hair Salon has asked me to hang up some of my paintings and they’re a very queer-centric and queer-friendly hair salon. The person who runs it is trans and non-binary and pretty much the entire staff is queer. So a very safe space for queer artists especially. Other than that, I have my website where people can see a lot of my work.