Longing belonging represents the meeting point between Hossein Valamanesh’s two cultures: on a background of characteristically Australian bushland, a Persian rug dissolves into the land through the flame of a campfire that burns at its centre.¹ This work is influenced by time Valamanesh spent in Papunya, Northern Territory, in 1974. He was inspired by the Aboriginal community’s symbiotic relationship with the land — a desert landscape similar to his own Iran — and the sense of place conjured in artworks by the local artists.² The natural setting and the use of fire reflect Valamanesh’s interest in working with the landscape, with fire being a common natural element across his oeuvre.³ In Zoroastrian philosophy (the predominant faith of Persia prior to the arrival of Islam) and in this artwork, fire is not seen as a destructive force but rather championed for its transformative power.⁴ The Persian carpet at the centre of this piece is symbolic not only in its cultural origins, but in its social function as a marker of domestic gathering spaces.⁵ Here, the interior domestic symbolism is taken outside to raise questions around ideas of home, place and belonging.

Endnotes  

1. Catherine Speck, ‘Australian art has lost two of its greats. Vale Ann Newmarch and Hossein Valamanesh’, The Conversation, 21 January 2022, viewed 22 June 2022.
2. Sarah Thomas, Hossein Valamanesh: A Survey [exhibition pamphlet], Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2001, pp.10–12.
3. Sarah Thomas, ‘Hossein Valamanesh: A Material Journey’, Art and Australia, vol. 38 no. 4, June–August 2001, pp.557–8.  
4. Håkon Naasen Tandberg, Relational Religion: Fires as Confidants in Parsi Zoroastrianism, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 2019, p.127. 
5. Thomas, ‘Hossein Valamanesh: A Material Journey’, pp.555–7.