Wahed Khakdan’s photographic and mysterious paintings have hints of magical realism. As a child, he became accustomed to art through his father, Valiollah Khakdan, one of the pioneers of Iranian stage design. He started his elementary education at the Tehran Academy of Fine Arts. Later in 1968, he entered the School of Decorative Arts and continued his studies in interior architecture. Three years after graduation, he exhibited his artworks in Seyhoun Gallery in his first solo exhibition. Since then, he has exhibited his artworks in Iran, the United States, and Germany many times. Until the early sixties, in parallel with painting in interior architecture and costume design for theater and cinema, he had scattered activities and moved to Germany in 1984. The father's theatrical heritage, the memories of his homeland, and the experience of this migration are deeply connected with his paintings' dramatic nature and narrative nature. Khakdan worked in the abstract in the first period of his work, but after graduating from university, he turned to surrealism. With the arrival of the season of revolution and war, under the influence of the atmosphere of that time, he created artworks with social themes with a realistic approach and allegorical expression. But the nature of the aliens is Khakdan's most famous work, belonging to the period after his migration and residence in Germany. The accumulation of objects, stillness, and limited space are the characteristic features of this period of single paintings. Khakdan focuses on personal stories and adds value to signs and details. This way, it combines the broken pieces of memory in a limited space and puts this collection over time. Khakdan looks at past memories from a nostalgic position; in other words, he thinks of the past through objects. Objects of different periods of his life pile up in his frames, and he pours his lived experiences in a symbolic tone in the form of elements that carry the burden of sorrow and grief. "Suitcases, photo frames, wooden shelves, suits, bedding, newspaper packages, dolls, and many other objects that seem to have been dumped in the corner of the warehouse over the years are remembered."

Relying on photorealistic techniques, color options, and textures, he paints the dust of antiquity on images and creates antique, haloed, and fetishistic objects. Idols have been destroyed and obsolete over time. Still, this destruction itself adds to the halo around each of them and their sanctity, simultaneously making them more desirable and unattainable. However, he does not seek to reconstruct his personal or national history and past. Homeland has become a changing and ambiguous place for Khakdan. Somewhere in Iran and Germany at the same time, past and present, dream and reality. And this intermediate state has penetrated into all the dimensions of his paintings. Mojabi writes about this period of work: "Khakdan, with a realistic payment, stares at the world and narrates that it can not be so real and natural; "Rather, it is a world of reality that is imagined, grows in the imagination, and expresses itself in the artist's memories." And Khakdan himself has the following inference from his work: "Childhood, the passing of time, the eternity of objects and people, places and abandoned objects, and most importantly, playing with the history of art."