Behnam Raeesian is an Iranian visual artist and poster designer working at the intersection of political urgency and symbolic minimalism. Through exhibitions, curatorial collaborations, and international jury roles, his practice examines power, conflict, censorship, and collective psychological landscapes within contemporary graphic culture.
Raeesian works through symbolic compression: familiar visual signs are reduced, displaced, or contaminated until they carry a second meaning. His posters operate as immediate public images while retaining psychological and political tension.
Behnam Raeesian’s BREAD AND FOOTBALL is a critical poster series that examines football as a global spectacle shaped by power, distraction, and controlled emotion. Through seven minimal visual metaphors, the project questions how the World Cup can move beyond sport and become a mechanism of mass attention: a beautiful trap, a ritual of applause, a toxic atmosphere, a controlled signal, and finally, a diversion that silences other urgent realities. The series does not reject the game itself. Instead, it looks at what gathers around it: violence disguised as celebration, loyalty shaped by spectacle, and entertainment used as a soft instrument of political control.
Artwork
Home Ground
A stadium becomes a landmine, turning home advantage into a field of hidden violence.
Applause for Blood
The football field becomes a bullring, where collective excitement turns violence into spectacle.
The Beautiful Trap
The pitch is reimagined as a mousetrap, exposing the game as an elegant device for capturing attention.
Spectator Species
A chameleon with a football eye reflects a spectator culture that changes colors with every spectacle.
Toxic Match
A gas mask breathes through a football, suggesting a poisoned atmosphere filtered by the game itself.
Under Control
A corner flag becomes a television antenna, turning the field into a transmitter of controlled narratives.
Diversion
A football becomes a mouth gag, showing distraction as a soft weapon against speech and attention.
Copyright © Behnam Raeesian 2026
