Maryam Amiryani: Come to Country
Rebecca Camacho Presents and Ulterior Gallery are pleased to co-present Come to Country, a tandem exhibition of new paintings by Maryam Amiryani, opening simultaneously on the East and West Coasts. This marks Amiryani’s fourth solo exhibition with Ulterior and her first with Rebecca Camacho. Both exhibitions will open on 24 October 2025.
“What is an American?” As a political refugee from Iran via France, and a member of the Iranian diaspora now living in West Texas, Amiryani explores the idea of Americaness, with the curiosity and precision of a social anthropologist. She teases out the fictionalized cultural image with the harsh realities of actually working on a ranch and raising cattle. Her fascination is tempered by an inimitable wit.
The icon of the rugged, lonesome, cowboy entered American popular imagery with the Marlboro Man advertisements that first appeared in 1954. Seeking to market filtered cigarettes, Philip Morris, the tobacco company, and Leo Burnett, a Chicago advertising executive, crafted a manly archetype that would become one of the most legendary campaigns in history. The image was inspired by Leonard McCombe’s 1949 Life Magazine photographs of Clarence Hailey “C.H.” Long (1910—1978), a young Texan cowboy whose likeness came to embody the figure of the Marlboro Man. McCombe, a European-born photographer from the Isle of Man, inextricably tied his incarnation of the cowboy with America’s romanticized view of the West.
As Louise Nevelsen once said, “Every artist is a collector.” Amiryani follows this tradition. Amiryani draws from her own archive of advertisements from the Come to Marlboro Country campaign to examine the cowboy and his mythical status. Her paintings juxtapose McCombe’s stark black-and-white imagery with the vast, color-saturated skies of Marfa, Texas, leading viewers to the visual threshold where the reality and myth intertwine.
Amiryani has dedicated this series to her neighbors Mem and Jeanne Hall, whose daily lives working with cattle and wearing actual spurs and chaps embody the tangible, unvarnished and onerous life of the cowboy.
On view concurrently on both coasts, Come to Country extends the nostalgic yet unsettled legend of what it means to be a cowboy - and by extension, an American - in this sprawling landscape.
Maryam Amiryani was born in Shiraz, Iran in 1967. Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Amiryani and her family relocated to Paris, France. Several years later, she moved to the United States, where she completed her education, obtaining a MFA in painting from the New York Academy of Art, New York, NY, in 1995. She also holds a BFA in Graphic Design from the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA, and a BS in Asian Historyfrom Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. Amiryani lives and works in Marfa, TX.
