Being from Kermanshah, Kurdistan, Iran, Pashaei is the first Kurdish-Iranian artist to convey the rich history of Kurdish culture.  He kept the memory, identity, and heritage of his people, in particular Kurdish women, alive via oil on canvas. Employing a perceptual and research approach, Pashaei painted Kurdish women, namely of the Kalhor tribe, as he saw them himself – as pioneers, leaders, and innovators of the region.

 

Over the span of a decade, he collected photographs and albums of Kurdish families, researching them to present patterns of figurative forms via oil on canvas. He then selected models, settings, and clothing from that region to photograph as subjects for his paintings.

 

Throughout his Kurdish collection, Pashaei created a modern expression of the pictorial identity of the Kurdish people, depicting their personalities in a mixture of traditional motifs and appearances of modern life, yet preserving the historical and ethnological roots harmoniously using the methods of photopaint, mixed media art, and oil.