“I want homeland.” This is the line by poet Mojtaba Mohammadi that remains suspended in Somaieh Amini’s mind, along with the image of a girl from behind, running enthusiastically over green hills toward a house on the horizon.

“تَعلقِ گُسیخته  (Ruptured Belonging)” is a collection of five oil paintings centering the house as a symbol of family, city, and country. In each piece, the figure displays one of the feelings she should have received from her environment but didn’t. 

Twenty years have passed since Somaieh’s first emigration, and she is still searching for a sense of arrival and security. Although Somaieh depicts her own figure in the paintings, this is not just her story. This is the everyday story of humans seeking a place with security and acceptance, so they can feel wanted, loved, respected, and belonging. Without a sense of belonging, we will wander from person to person and from place to place with our unhealed wounds. These paintings evoke the desire for a house, a family, a city, a country, and a world that will end our ruptured belonging.

Somaieh Amini is a painter and illustrator based in San Jose, CA. She was born in 1981 in Isfahan, Iran. She received a B.A. in painting at the University of Al-Zahra in Tehran. Between 2001 and 2007, Somaieh worked as a Concept, Background, and Layout Artist with several animation companies, as well as a Matte Painter for several television series and films. In 2009, Somaieh left Iran to pursue an M.A. in painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma in Rome, Italy. In 2012 she emigrated from Italy to the USA. These relocations have had an emotional impact on her personal and social life, taking her three years to restart her artistic career again. In 2015, she decided that painting and illustration are what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.