This piece originally appeared in ZAMAN, an arts & media collective dedicated to the remembrance, preservation, and re-evaluation of Mizrahi cultural consciousness.
This oil painting by Phillip Neman explores how the cultural dichotomy between his life as a first-generation American and his distant, almost mythicized conception of his family’s homeland of Iran blurs his self-image. Set against the backdrop of his college dorm room, the painting examines the gaps that exist between how he perceives himself and how others perceive him, illuminating how one’s heritage can simultaneously serve as a catalyst for self-understanding and external misinterpretation.
Neman’s work in painting and in mixed media often centers around the issue of being born into a culture associated with an unfamiliar physical place. Ironically, his face is not visible in his portrait and is instead replaced by fragments of a geographic map of Iran. This serves to question how others see him – as someone reduced to their ethnicity – simply because the audience is prevented from making a more nuanced connection to the figure’s facial expression or demeanor. However, by essentially making Iran’s topography synonymous with his own skin, Neman also nods toward the quiet yet ineludible, enduring connection that his lineage establishes between body and homeland.
As a California native whose Jewish family is effectively barred from returning to Iran safely, Neman grew up embracing and celebrating the new place that his parents chose to call home. The objects surrounding his figure are representative of the process of adolescent identity-building, touching on how one’s sense of self can stem from much else than heritage. By treating intimate home objects and souvenirs with the same care as the body and Iran’s map, Neman’s self-portrait serves to mend the internal struggle of being caught in the crosshairs of modern, youthful Mizrahi-American identity.
