For its fiftieth-anniversary exhibition Intervention: Fresh Perspectives after 50 Years, the USC Pacific Asia museum invited Amir H. Fallah to create a new painting entitled You Can't Use an Old Map to Explore New Worlds. Measuring eight by twelve feet, this large-scale work continues the artist’s ongoing practice of demarcating paintings with a grid-like organization. Taking a cue from Persian miniature painting, elaborate borders meander across the canvas, dividing the canvas to create a non-hierarchical, non-illusionistic picture plane. The images in this work are flattened, layered, and stacked, calling attention to the psychological space of borders, identities, and histories. Typically, Fallah sources his imagery from online museum and library archives. For the first time, however, the artist collaborated directly with the curators and archivists at the Pacific Asia Museum to source and directly respond to the actual artifacts from the museum’s collection.

In his newest painting, Fallah constellates the cultural symbols found on each artifact across the canvas to explore the intricate histories behind them. For example, Fallah reproduces an ancient Chinese dinner plate that included a depiction of a lion. The animal, Fallah learned, is not native to China but was introduced due to Persian cultural design and influence. The phoenix and dragon motifs were copied from snuff bottles created using middle eastern silversmithing techniques. Curious George, the monkey that appears in popular culture children’s books, represents Fallah’s desire to unearth the violent truth of the history of colonialism and racism in non-Western countries. Upon a deeper inspection, Fallah’s emblems trace a complicated trade history, demonstrating how surrounding Asian and Middle Eastern countries influenced one another and shaped the rest of the world.