Kian Vatan/Whoxhe's Last Supper

Kian Vatan/ Whoxhe's Last Supper

He Dances with Elephants!
On the Last Supper of Kian Vatan
Amir Soqrati

1
The stage light is on. Whoxhe enters the scene like a stranger, dancing with another elephant. This might be the only instance where Whoxhe appears joyful and dancing in Kian Vatan’s paintings. But who is the other figure? Is Whoxhe a creation of the artist, or does he represent the artist himself? In this piece, the artist manifests himself as dancing with Whoxhe on stage. Yet, this is the only moment of Whoxhe’s happiness - no one recalls such joy. What remains in memory are the pains and sorrows.

2
Kian Vatan began with the city, observing it from above - like the elephant in Bijan Mofid’s Shahr-e Ghesseh, witnessing the struggles of the urban landscape from a higher vantage. His paintings of Tehran’s modern urban scenery in the 1990s depicted the distressed human figure amidst renewal and destruction: the renewal of time and the eradication of memories and historical narratives. He had already explored this theme in his previous collections in the 1980s, documenting Iranian society from the Qajar era to contemporary times through portraits and figurative forms. Later, he descended from the city’s heights into its depths, illustrating the modern Iranian individual within the remnants of architecture - isolated and abandoned like a forsaken entity. His choice of Shahr-e Ghesseh as a symbol of modern artistic and cultural identity aligns with his continued exploration of Iranian fate in the struggle between the old and new. Ultimately, he moved from the city to the individual, selecting the elephant from Shahr-e Ghesseh as a motif. After several exhibitions, the elephant was no longer the poetic figure of Mofid’s play but a stranger - one that Kian Vatan named Whoxhe.

3
In ancient Eastern cultures, the elephant symbolizes wisdom and knowledge. In Shahr-e Ghesseh, however, the wounded elephant undergoes transformation, losing its identity. A character with a massive body, large ears, a long trunk, and peculiar teeth becomes the embodiment of difference. It perceives the city and its people from a perspective beyond theirs. This difference unsettles the city’s inhabitants, making them question why this creature is unlike the rest. In a land where independent thinking holds no place, being different becomes the primary affliction. The elephant comes to symbolize awareness - an identifier of the ignorance that has engulfed the city, an ignorance so normalized that it remains unquestioned. In such a space, people intervene in the life of this distinct being, gradually altering, deforming, and breaking it down, only to return to their daily routines without consequence. Yet, Whoxhe in Kian Vatan’s work is no longer the elephant of Shahr-e Ghesseh. He has become a stranger - a representative of solitude and exile in his own land, wounded by societal hostility, his body pierced by arrows, helpless and abandoned. He is neither a destroyer nor a force of destruction; he is simply lost in despair, a despair that leads to isolation.

4
It is true that Kian Vatan expresses sympathy for this ‘human-elephant’ in distress and dances with him. However, in portraying the crisis of humanity, he holds no illusions. In his depiction of the wandering Whoxhe, he does not remove the elephant’s mask, nor does he replace it with the face of a wolf. He does not present him as victorious or invincible. The artist does not seek to rewrite history or reconstruct it in favor of the defeated. Whoxhe, in Vatan’s work, offers neither reassurance to the desperate nor encouragement to the broken. Whoxhe is the raw visage of a tragedy for which he himself is blameless. Yet, the artist refuses to embellish him as a cinematic hero, adorned with stylized wounds. Instead, he reveals the despair of a man who, having endured endless defeats, now wanders the wasteland of suffering and isolation. This is not merely a narrative of a country’s political and social history; rather, the artist strives beyond worn-out political slogans to delve into the sorrow and solitude of a human being.

5
The Last Supper is a farewell. Da Vinci transformed The Last Supper into one of the most dramatic farewell scenes in the history of art - a sudden parting between Christ and his disciples, murmuring ominously of the impending tragedy. But Kian Vatan’s Last Supper is the artist’s farewell to his creation, Whoxhe. Here, betrayer and betrayed are indistinguishable from one another. The catastrophe has long since occurred, surpassing the pre-tragic stage. This time, society has entered the household, invading its sanctity, blurring the lines between host and guest. The figures seem too burdened to stand, entangled in wooden bars and metal rods. The characters look at each other and see themselves - each individual a fogged mirror, failing to reflect the true essence of the other. There is no need for stage lights; even in darkness, the truth is visible, marching toward us - bitter and grotesque. Kian Vatan’s Last Supper lays bare the present reality of a society where people, wounded by one another, have mutated, wearing the contradictory costumes of their identities, and boasting about it.

6
The curtain falls, yet there is no performance; we have crossed from one side of the table to the other. The lights come on again, and once more, we forget our shared confusion - one we had recognized in Whoxhe. We return to our daily routines, failing to realize that one among us has vanished.