Iranian-born artist Simin Jalilian has developed a sharp artistic eye for German society after nearly a decade in the country, creating expressive figurative paintings that capture the complex reality of life caught between integration and the constant fear of deportation. The 35-year-old artist, who arrived in Germany in 2016, quickly discovered the limits of what could be publicly displayed under Iran's mullah regime when she primarily painted women in her homeland.
Jalilian's distinctive artistic style draws heavily from the Neue Wilde (New Wild Ones) movement, particularly influenced by German artists Martin Kippenberger and Jörg Immendorff, whom she admired during her time at art academy in Iran. She later studied under Werner Büttner, a prominent representative of the movement, at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts. Her expressive paintings, often rendered in dirty, earthy colors, capture moments from media coverage and everyday observations while demonstrating an acute sensitivity to political atmospheres.
One of her most striking works, "The Wow Effect" (2024), depicts four quirky figures wearing 3D glasses sitting in bright red cinema seats. Painted with rough, jagged brushstrokes using thickly applied oil paint that resembles abstract ornamentation while precisely rendering contours and contrasts, the painting shows viewers so mesmerized by the screen that drinking straws fall from their open mouths. "These are people who let themselves be euphoric about the screen, but don't see reality," Jalilian explained in an interview.
Art historian Larissa Kikol describes Jalilian's work as where "l'art pour l'art meets political art." The artist's success has been significant since arriving in Germany – she has received numerous awards and the Hamburg Kunsthalle has acquired her work for their permanent collection. This artistic recognition has also helped secure her residency status in Germany after many years of uncertainty, as she recounts.
However, Jalilian's bold and often humorous paintings are consistently permeated by feelings of melancholy and fear, reflecting the reality that her life as a newcomer in Germany is not entirely secure and that she exists in a constant state of suspension. In her unusual self-portrait titled "Integration" (2025), she depicts herself attempting to open a beer bottle with a lighter. A fellow student in Hamburg had joked that if she could accomplish this task, she would be considered integrated. The painting shows her working almost obsessively at the bottle neck while the ground beneath her blurs and brownish-red streams flow through it.
The theme of deportation fears manifests powerfully in another 2025 work titled "Bitte nicht abschieben" (Please Don't Deport Me), where she paints herself surrounded by security forces with machine guns in front of a deportation aircraft. "I am afraid. The painting shows my dark daydreams," Jalilian says about this deeply personal work. The painting reflects the broader context of Germany's ongoing immigration debates, ten years after the 2015 refugee summer when Chancellor Angela Merkel's "Wir schaffen das" (We can do this) became a rallying cry that is heard much less frequently today.
Jalilian's memories of her homeland continue to influence her work in exile, as demonstrated in her cynically titled painting "Free up Storage Space" (2023). Rendered in a drastic style reminiscent of 1920s Expressionism, the work shows guards forcing new inmates into a completely overcrowded Iranian prison, with faces fading into the anonymity of the human mass. This piece reflects the ongoing political repression in Iran and the lasting impact of those experiences on artists living in exile.
The artist learned to paint from memory rather than from photographs during her time in Iran, when she privately organized life drawing classes because they were officially prohibited. This skill has served her well in Germany, where she has developed an exceptional ability to retain and artistically interpret her observations of both media events and everyday social interactions. Her paintings serve as a unique documentary of the immigrant experience in contemporary Germany, capturing both the hope for integration and the persistent anxiety about belonging and acceptance in a new homeland.
