Paul Revere rides again in 'Persian Visions'

Revolutionary potential in Iranian photography show at USM

Untitled by Ebrahim Khadem Bayat

by Daniel Kany, Press Herald


In America, we don’t typically think of artists as intellectuals. Warhol proffered the idea of artist as ringmaster – mixing theater and salesmanship with talent. The Abstract Expressionists were sold as hard-drinking brawlers isolating themselves for their own self-expressive spiritual journeys. Now we aren’t sure if Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst are even on our side or if they’re just selling snake oil.

But somewhere in there is an American notion of an avant-garde with truly revolutionary ideas. We can hardly forget, after all, not just Paul Revere’s ride, but his highly-propagandized image of the “Boston Massacre.” After all, it is often argued that it was Revere’s artistic license with this engraving that set the revolutionary fire alight. A similarly credited image is Benjamin Franklin’s “Join, or Die” engraving of a snake chopped into its component colonies.

These images do not illustrate facts or traffic in settled notions. Instead, they seek to stretch the viewer’s imagination forward. While Franklin used the logic of wartime (and economic) alliances, Revere mobilized fear: If citizens of Boston could be shot down in the street by British troops, no one in the Colonies would be safe.

The power of these images created by our most famous leading intellectuals led average citizens to conclude marshal action was necessary. This is how the American Revolution went from unthinkable to logical to inevitable – to history.

Governments have long understood the power of art. History is dotted with Savanarolas getting Boticellis to toss their own paintings onto bonfires. There are Daumiers and Hogarths and Malevichs: The Soviets came to fear the revolutionary potential of Malevich’s abstract paintings because they saw how he became a leader in a successful revolution – their own – so they turned on him and banned his abstraction. Now, we are reading about Cornelius Gurlitt’s hoarding of 1,500 allegedly Nazi-confiscated paintings; a reminder that the dark genius of Hitler – a talented painter – did not overlook the power of entarte Kunst – “degenerate art” – and its propensity to inspire revolutionary ideas.

USM’s “Persian Visions” is a photography exhibition that shows us what edgy art made in oppressive regimes can look like now. While it was created by the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art and the University of Minnesota, this widely-travelling show had to pass through government filters, but it nonetheless bristles with mystery and a pervasive sense of paranoia in forms essentially alien to American cultural thought. This alone makes the show worth visiting, but even the obvious questions (like, to what extent was it redacted by Iranian censors?) inspire thoughts that genuinely stretch our intellects on the topics of culture, freedom and the role of art within a society.

The three score photos (and two videos) by 20 artists on view at the USM Art Gallery in Gorham and USM’s Portland campus Area Gallery also comprise the first survey of Iranian photography on display in America, so – as compromised as it may be – it is a historic show.

“Persian Visions” largely features photographs of people in interiors. It is set thick with mystery and anxiety. Considering it is a society of law-enforced burkas (which, according to a feminist dialectic, assigns revolutionary power to a woman’s displayed sexuality; a idea rich in Koroush Adim’s unnervingly ravishing “Revelations 2,” for example), we see life in Iran as happening indoors where families can take off their public masks. In other words, the dialogue is not public/private as we know it, but political/private as Iranians ostensibly live.

Self-portrait by Shokoufe Alidousti. Courtesy Press Herald.

Farshid Azarang’s “Scattered Reminiscences,” is a standout work, but it holds tight to the mortal domestic concerns of the show. It features 11 panels in three lines starting with old snapshots of family members. These images are then followed by photos of television screen static (images of televisions play a surprisingly large role in “Persian Visions”) and then return to newer portraits, cut to black (brother, undoubtedly dead) or finish with a blurred image (sister, Alzheimer’s? dementia?)

A deep theme is the unknown, and it is very different from American-style tension usually defined by its resolution. One of the two very strong videos, “White Station,” follows an old woman during a white-out blizzard as she ventures out of her apartment building to the bus stop. And when the bus doesn’t arrive, she moves to the next stop before, ultimately, giving up. In a video looped for an exhibition, this takes on a fascinatingly doomed-to-endlessly-repeat-itself feel.

Shokoufeh Alidousti’s self-portraits show her in black with only parts of her face revealed (hinting at a sophisticated take on synecdoche – using a part to represent the whole) on a black ground with black and white family photos of her as a little girl with mom, dad and siblings. This weaves a gorgeously tangled web of blocked or hidden narratives about her interior life (in both senses). And it presents an artistic way of seeing the world that could hardly be more different than Maine’s art of ocean and nature scenes, or even our labor-intensive contemporary art of process and craft.

Just as Franklin and Revere looked to the cutting-edge communications technology of the printing press, “Persian Visions” presents photographs ripe with the digital potential to squeeze out to the world through any tiny access point to the Internet.

It is also a reminder of the critical issues of identity that accompany or even drive radical societal change. After all, when Franklin and Revere made those famous images, they were not yet Americans: They were Englishmen.

“Persian Visions” is not a typical photography show for Maine. It is thoughtful, smart and – despite passing the censors – potentially subversive.

“Generous Butcher,” a composite image, by Esmail Abassi. Courtesy Press Herald. 

Freelance writer Daniel Kany is an art historian who lives in Cumberland.

Via Press Herald

Related Link: 'Persian Visions,' Ovations concert promise 'diverse immersion' in Iranian culture 

'Persian Visions,' Ovations concert promise 'diverse immersion' in Iranian culture

“Untitled”, Arman Stephanian, 2003. Courtesy MaineToday Media.

Exhibit Catalog (PDF)

by David Carkhuff, Portland Daily Sun

The universal character of art is one of the revelations offered by an exhibit of Iranian photography at University of Southern Maine.

The lesson: "It's not so foreign after all. Art does flourish, it's part of our aspect of being and it will flourish even at times of repression," said Carolyn Eyler, director of Exhibitions and Programs at University of Southern Maine in Gorham and Portland.

"Persian Visions: Contemporary Photography from Iran," on display until Dec. 8, gives visual clues to life in Iran, a nation also known as Persia with deep roots in ancient Asia. For years, Iran has dominated the news cycle in America for different reasons, generally as a result of policy tensions and political conflicts. Yet, the photographs reach into a deeper understanding of Iranian life, Eyler noted.

"It's interesting that the country that we knew as Persia still exists, there's a place, a people, a culture, there's a particular sensibility," said Eyler, describing a "very refined aesthetic sensibility," as illustrated in ornate tapestries and other works of art. The photography often cuts against the grain of tradition. albeit with subtlety and nuance.

"From over a dozen artists, 58 works, you can see a variety of personal expressions, which in totality gives us a glimpse, at least a slice of the overall cultural sensibility," Eyler said.

Reza Jalali, American-Iranian scholar and writer, and coordinator of the USM Office of Multicultural Student Affairs, explained in a press release, "Modern Iran, the heir to the 2,500 year-old Persian civilization, is home to a vibrant artistic community, which despite state censorship and decades-old sanctions, continues to create and express art that demands our attention."

Jalali will explore the context of contemporary Persian performing and visual arts Saturday with a lecture, "Unveiling Contemporary Iranian Arts," at USM's Hannaford Hall in Portland. The lecture, from 7 p.m. to 7:45 p.m., is a lead-in to another cultural experience, that of a concert by four-time Grammy nominee Kayhan Kalhor, renowned for his mastery of traditional Persian music. Kalhor will perform at Hannaford Hall at 8 p.m., in a production by Portland Ovations, a premier nonprofit performing artists group active in Portland since 1931.

Aimee Petrin, executive director of Portland Ovations, said the group has sought out Kalhor for some time. "He's been on our wish list for several years," she said.

The "Persian Visions" exhibit helped spur Saturday's concert into becoming a reality, Petrin said.

"Once we heard through our partners at USM that this exhibit was coming, we thought this is the perfect timing," Petrin said.

The Gorham Art Gallery will be open noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday (at presstime, indications were the Portland gallery would be open Friday but not Saturday, per normal hours). So, with a little bit of planning, for those embarking on an art-and-music combination, the photography exhibit could be the first part of a multi-pronged experience.

"I think if someone goes to the exhibit, and then comes to the preconcert lecture and then the performance they would get a pretty instant and diverse immersion in Persian art," Petrin said.

"I think they provide different insights into Persian art," Petrin said of the images and music.
Eyler said the Persian photography has parallels in history.

Speaker Pamela Karimi, assistant professor of art history at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, at a lecture earlier this year in Portland, expressed an analogy of African-Americans whose art often held masked meanings.

"All countries have had their moments, with the music of African-Americans, looking back to the 1920s and '30s there are a lot of coded words and things they couldn't say directly," Eyler said.

Likewise, the photography exhibit features "cultural references and perhaps a sense of repression that can only be pointed toward," she said.

"It appears it's a very important culture particularly right now to get to know better," Eyler said. "Isn't it wonderful that here's an opportunity to bypass all the middlemen, the media, and stand face to face in front of a personal expression of an Iranian or Persian artist?"

At USM, the multicultural population is one of the growing populations of students, reflecting changing demographics of the Portland area, Eyler said. This trend, she said, adds significance to the USM art exhibit, the Portland Ovations concert and a Portland Museum of Art exhibit, "Ahmed Alsoudani: Redacted," from American-Iraqi artist and Maine College of Art graduate Ahmed Alsoudani.

“Untitled”, Ahmad Nateghi, 1998. Courtesy  MaineToday Media.

For more about the Master of Persian Music: Kayhan Kalhor concert, visit www.portlandovations.org.
For more about Persian Visions: Contemporary Photography from Iran," visit http://www.usm.maine.edu/gallery.

Event Details:

• "Unveiling Contemporary Iranian Arts" at Hannaford Hall, University of Southern Maine, Portland. Saturday, Nov. 23, 7 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. Writer and community organizer, Reza Jalali introduces examples and explores the context of contemporary Persian performing and visual arts.

• Master of Persian Music: Kayhan Kalhor, at Hannaford Hall, University of Southern Maine, Portland. Saturday, Nov. 23, 8 p.m. Internationally acclaimed virtuoso on the kamancheh (a four-stringed, upright Persian fiddle, ancestor to the violin), four-time Grammy nominee Kayhan Kalhor is a major creative influence in today's global music scene. His performances of traditional Persian music and multiple collaborations have won him fans around the world. Recognized for his classical playing and compositions, Kalhor has appeared in solo recital at Carnegie Hall and as part of Lincoln Center's MostlyMozart Festival. He is a founding member of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project. In Portland, he will be joined by additional musicians, to be announced, for an evening of masterful music.

• A University of Southern Maine art exhibit of 58 works of photography and video installations reflecting life in contemporary Iran is now open and on display until Dec. 8. "Persian Visions: Contemporary Photography from Iran," noon to 4 p.m., Tuesday to Sunday, Art Gallery, Gorham Campus, and 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., Monday to Friday, AREA Gallery, located in the Woodbury Campus Center, Portland Campus. "Persian Visions" was developed by Hamid Severi for the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran, and Gary Hallman of the Regis Center for Art, University of Minnesota and is toured by International Arts & Artists, Washington, D.C.


Via Portland Daily Sun

Art meets Politics: Iranian Revolution poster art on display

by Kyle Sherard, Mountain Xpress


There are roughly 200 connections between Asheville and the Iranian Revolution of 1979. No, really. It just so happens that one of the largest privately held collections of posters from the Iranian Revolution, nearly 200 in number, resides here in Asheville.

For the next two months, 146 of these posters are on view as part of In Search of Lost Causes: Images of the Iranian Revolution: Paradox, Propaganda and Persuasion, a multi-institutional exhibition series and program, showing at three institutions across Asheville.

Thirty posters hang in UNCA’s Ramsey Library, 10 line the walls of Firestorm Cafe and Books and the remaining 106 fill up two floors in the Phil Mechanic Studios’ Flood and Courtyard Gallery in the River Arts District.

The weekend-long schedule begins at UNCA on Friday, Oct. 17, with an opening reception, film screening and lecture by Dr. Dabashi, an Iranian-born scholar, cultural historian and the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Using a N.C. Humanities Council grant, Dabashi traveled to Asheville to co-curate the exhibitions with Steward, and give a series of lectures and presentations on the collection’s historical and contemporary significance.

The collection belongs to Carlos Steward and Cynthia Potter, who operate the Courtyard Gallery in the Phil Mechanic Studios. They received the posters in 1999 as a gift from a source they will not disclose. Dabashi believes the donor was heavily involved in the inner-workings of the revolution, which took place between 1977 and 1979.

The posters span from the Revolution’s build-up in post-coup, 1960s Iran to the height of the Revolution to the aftermath in the early '80s.

They come in every shade imaginable, though black and red are dominant. Thick text runs throughout many pieces, appearing in [Persian], French and English, among others. Most of the posters feature a cast of heroes and villains that include pre- and post-revolution governmental officials, individuals, and groups of activists and laborers. The pictures depict individuals who are wounded, dead or dying — both innocent and guilty. Some wield AK-47s, others pray.

Several works celebrate music and working-class peasantry, while some criticize U.S. involvement in the 1953 coup that ultimately set the Revolution in motion. Still others contain bold designs wrapped around thick [Persian] script.

“They’re the perfect marriage of art and politics,” says Mark Gibney, a professor of political science at UNCA who helped anchor the exhibition.

Dabashi describes the collection as a socially and politically comprehensive view of the Iranian Revolution. It’s a museum in and of itself, he said, “one of a national revolutionary consciousness — a cataclysmic event that included millions of millions of people.”

Steward initially contacted Dabashi, via email, in June 2010 after reading his book Staging a Revolution. The book had information on the Revolution’s graphic and artistic works, Steward says, “and a lot of them were similar to these posters.”

Steward’s message was short and direct, according to Dabashi: He had nearly 200 posters from the Revolution — was Dabashi interested in looking at them?

Dabashi admitted that he was initially hesitant to jump into the matter. He and Peter Chelkowski, a colleague from NYU, had spent years amassing similar imagery from the revolution. They compiled the imagery and wrote “Staging a Revolution,” which cataloged evidence from all sides of the movement, rather than taking a one-sided approach. This allowed for a fully-documented picture and a greater conceptual view of the Iranian Revolution.

“I did the book,” Dabashi says, “and I thought it was out of my system.”

Neither Dabashi nor Chelkowski had come across such a large collection of ephemera, posters specifically, in such pristine shape. “They were all in mint condition,” he says, “and I thought, how do you have these in Asheville, North Carolina?”

“Streets and lamp posts,” Dabashi says, “that’s where these things belonged.” In other words, the posters should be ragged and full of staples, nails and tack holes, not in the flawless, fresh-pressed condition of Steward and Potter’s Collection. Either that or they would've been trashed decades ago.

“The posters [are] remarkably representative of the Revolution,” he says. “It’s proof that the Revolution wasn’t from just one ideology.” Instead, there were many factions working together to overthrow an oppressive power.

And these posters didn’t just come from Tehran, he notes. They were made in all regions of Iran and from surrounding countries. They hailed from Israel to Eastern Europe, India to London and even Salt Lake City. “Anywhere where there were Iranian students, they came together,” he explains.

The collection’s geographical and ideological differences are further proof of the movement’s breadth.

The artists and the revolutionaries saw their cause in other movements, Dabashi says. They promoted movements from all over the globe: women’s rights in the Middle East, Palestinian exile and even the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. One poster features an outstretched Iranian arm beside a similarly-posed black arm, both in protest and clad in broken shackles.

According to Dabashi, the collection has universal themes. “They carry ... a relation to any movement or ideological revolution,” he says. And because of that, they draw us into comparing them to the present. “What about now?” he says. “What about us?” They encompass the past and inform the present, he says.

Dabashi no longer looks at such collections as stagnate or placeholders of an era. Rather, these collections carry contemporary weight. “It’s a way to touch base,” he says, “to revive the cosmopolitan disposition.”

The lineage of all of the work that formed Staging a Revolution is buried in Stanford University’s archives, says to Dabashi. “It’s collecting dust.”

Such is the fate of many similar academic endeavors. But Dabashi and Steward plan to keep the posters and photographs in motion. They’ll travel from Asheville to Los Angeles, then New York before heading overseas.

During the question and answer session, several attendees noted the shift in media presentation, asking if the digital age had snuffed out print media’s representation in the modern revolutionary landscape.

“I’m neither antiquarian, nor beholden,” he said of the posters’ vintaged, material physicality. “The fact is, the digital age is no joke. It has traction, both negative and positive.” The immediacy and global reach of such social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, he says, is powerful, immense — unstoppable even.

“We must be aware of the material significance,” he said, adding, “but the ideals are the same, only the technology has changed.”

In Search of Lost Causes is on view at UNCA’s Ramsey Library through Wednesday, Oct. 30, the Flood Gallery through Friday, Nov. 29 and Firestorm Cafe through late November. An opening reception will be held at the Flood Gallery on Friday, Oct. 18, from 6-8 p.m. At 8 p.m., the Courtyard Gallery will be screening Chicken with Plums on the top floor of the Phil Mechanic Studios. On Saturday, Oct. 19, Firestorm Cafe and Books will have an opening reception from 7-9 p.m. The evening will feature a brief presentation and book signing by Dr. Dabashi. The events are free to attend. Exhibition catalogs are available for purchase at all locations.


The complete poster exhibition can be seen online at: Posters

See also: Filthy Hippies coming to see Iranian Poster Exhibition from the Iranian Revolution



Via Mountain Xpress

Contemporary Iranian art speaks from the heart

Masoumeh Mozafari, ‘Heat stroke’, 100x100cm, Acrylic on Canvas, 2011. Courtesy of the artist and {al.arte.magazine}.

by Aya Johanna Daniëlle Dürst Britt, {al.arte.magazine}

During World War II, the third floor of the building at Herengracht 401 in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam hid a number of German Jewish artists behind its facade. Today the post-war art venue Castrum Peregrini, which was founded subsequently, offers a temporary shelter to the contemporary artwork of over twenty Iranian artists carefully curated by Shaheen Merali. The latter titled the current collection of graphics, photographs, paintings and various installations ‘Speaking from the heart – The polemic sensibility from Iran’.

According to the internationally acclaimed artist Mehraneh Atashi (1980), this title somewhat unnecessarily replaces an earlier one. Atashi is among the twenty-three Iranian artists who already participated in the earlier though differently titled exhibition also curated by Merali, at the Freies Museum in Berlin in 2011. The only difference in the line-up is Reza Abedini, the famous graphic designer and artistic director of the Azad Art Gallery. He designed the poster accompanying the present exhibition and replaced late fellow artist Farideh Lashaei (1944-2013) in ‘Speaking from the heart’.

Aesthetic opposition

The Azad Art Gallery in Tehran is an initiative run by the artists listed at the bottom of this article, who are all taking part in the Amsterdam exhibition. The Azad Art Gallery exhibits artwork for a maximum of two weeks: a time-span long enough for the public to pay a visit, but usually short enough not to arouse the suspicion or repercussions of the regime. After the Iranian elections of 2009 gave birth to a series of events generally referred to as the ‘Green Movement’ (which originated a year ahead of the wave of uprisings in the Middle East dubbed the ‘Arab Spring’), Iranian artists found their social work space often confined to the borders of the city, or, in some cases, even limited to the confines of their homes. Their personal experience of gross human rights violations and immense social distress is a prominent and confronting feature in most of their works.

In the work of Mehraneh Atashi this is less visible. I asked her what message or image she intends to convey with her work. Atashi: “Imagine your home as a resistance space in a city that seems to equal a state, where there is always a possibility of conflict. Still, you can transform the conflict into something new, something fruitful, by translating it into art. Art is not about the story itself: there is always a story, a history. In my view, what matters is the way in which the story is told: the storytelling.” Four pictures of her series ‘Hanging garden’ (2010-2011) are featured in ‘Speaking from the heart’. Using a water tank to create these shots, Atashi used the tranquil transparency and fluidity of the water to break the light and reflect the imagery of the fixed and vexed city Tehran.

Mehraneh Atashi, ‘Hanging Garden’ series, 60x80cm, (3, 2010-2011). Courtesy of the artist and {al.arte.magazine}.

Art as a language

The exhibition came into being as a result of the cooperation between various parties and the funding by two separate subsidies. The initiator and co-organiser of ‘Speaking from the heart’ is Framer Framed, a Dutch “initiative to discuss the politics of representation and curatorial practices in the 21st century”. Framer Framed noticed the Berlin exhibition and subsequently endeavoured to bring it to The Netherlands, where Castrum Peregrini proved the most suitable venue. The intriguing past of this venue, interwoven with that of its charismatic founder and artist in residence Gisèle d’Ailly van Waterschoot van der Gracht (1912-2013), certainly adds meaning and poignancy to ‘Speaking from the heart’. This title was chosen by Merali and Framer Framed with regard to the differing Dutch context.

It is interesting to see how the organisations involved joined hands with curator Merali to allow the current exhibition to literally ‘speak’ for itself. Merali: “Local conditions determine the possibilities of the artists to mediate their work and their views. I am passionate about curating regionally, as this offers possibilities to exhibit what otherwise remains local knowledge. I hope it clarifies what remains still a starting point for further conversations about art as a language, instead of as about a group of objects. In the works at display in ‘Speaking from the heart’ it’s not the intellect speaking, but the heart. And the heart is universally associated with both love and pain – with blood, beating through the heart, and with bloodshed, death, loss.”

Farhad Fozouni – TEHRAN (poster print). Courtesy of the artist and {al.arte.magazine}.

Scholarly precision and cold-blooded graphics mark the works of poet and graphical artist Farhad Fozouni (1979). In a different, map-like work, Fozouni laid out the province of Tehran in bloody red, its borders figuratively blurry in the northwest, cut razor-sharp in the southeast. He sprinkled certain spots with poetical musings in Persian and connected them with lines, both in white. Reza Abedini explained the words to me as diary-like fragments; tiny contemporary odes some of which are as intimate of tone as if being addressed to a lover. Viewing Fozouni’s work, I realise how much I would have appreciated an accompanying catalogue offering a translation of the Persian words which Fozouni included. Now, I feel dumb in a way: I can’t grasp the meaning of what the words convey, nor does Reza’s explanation sufficiently satisfy my hunger to understand the work. Still, the graphics of Fozouni’s somewhat macabre ‘Kitchen Poetry’ leave ample room for speculation.

Farhad Fozouni, 21x33.5cm, 2010 (digital print from same series as ‘Kitchen Poetry’). Courtesy of the artist and {al.arte.magazine}.

Curating Iran in The Netherlands

How does one curate a country irreversibly re-awakening to democratic reform, that has been entangled in violent socio-religious constraints for so long? Well, with care. Merali opted for an outside the box approach – at least outside the general Western frame of reference which usually either involves some stereotypical links to Persia’s eclectic past of Mughal art, king stories and Sufi poetry, or explicitly refers to its peculiar religious-political situation in the region ever since 1979. Two explicit video installations plainly offer painful food for thought, whereas other works communicate a bitter sense of humour. Some of the works included in the exhibition have to be ‘discovered’, like a series of framed photographs obviously recovered from shredded photos depicting people who got wounded during demonstrations, shown behind wire gauze in a tiny dark room.

Although ‘Speaking from the heart’ reveals only a tip of the immense contemporary Iranian art iceberg, Merali succeeded in presenting a fair and wide variety of politicised Iranian art more than worthwhile viewing. Moreover, until the finissage on November 9, Castrum Peregrini hosts a variety of activities related to this remarkable exhibition every Tuesday evening.

‘Speaking from the heart – The polemic sensibility from Iran’ - 27 September to 9 November 2013, Castrum Peregrini, Herengracht 401, 1017 BP, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The venue is open Wednesdays to Fridays 14.00–18.00.

Participating artists:

Mehraneh Atashi, Navid Azimi Sajadi, Mahmood Bakhshi, Masoumeh Bakhtiary, Majid Fathizadeh, Parastou Forouhar, Farhad Fozouni, Ghazaleh Hedayat, Taha Heydary, Melodi Hosainzadeh, Katayoun Karami, Aria Kasaei, Majid Korang Beheshti, Azadeh Madani, Amir Mobed, Mehran Mohajer, Masoumeh Mozafari, Homan Nobakht, Sara Roohisefat, Atefeh Samaei, Rozita Sharafjahan, Mohamad M. Tabatabaei, Reza Abedini.

Via {al.arte.magazine}

She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World

A Show of Strength by Middle Eastern Women Photographers

Nil Nil #19, Shadi Ghadirian, 2008, colour photograph. Ed. of 10, 76 x 115 cm; 29.9 x 45.3 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

by Kerri MacDonald, Lens, New York Times


Despite the cultural limitations many have faced, women have been at the forefront of photography in Iran and the Arab world. In societies dominated by men, female photographers are using images to raise questions and explore issues of identity. They’re telling stories — often their own.

“I was raised with people trying to tell me what to do and think,” said Newsha Tavakolian, who shoots for The New York Times from Iran. “Now I want those looking at my work to have their own opinions. I don’t want to enforce any ideas or views upon them. They are free.”

Ms. Tavakolian‘s work is included in “She Who Tells a Story,” an exhibition showcasing 12 photographers from the Arab world, all women. She was encouraged to tell her story “in a different way” when she lost her permit to work as a photojournalist in Iran in 2009. Her photography, she said last week via e-mail, has been shaped by limitations.

But, she said: “The obstacles I have faced are not so special, nor have they been overall specific to me: my sisters, my friends and even my mother and grandmother all have to deal with limitations written up in laws or demanded by culture.”

“She Who Tells a Story” opened at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston this week. Four of the artists included are Iranian; three — Ms. Tavakolian, Gohar Dashti and Shadi Ghadirian — live and work in Iran today. The exhibit also highlights work by Jananne Al-Ani, Boushra Almutawakel, Rana El Nemr, Lalla Essaydi, Tanya Habjouqa, Rula Halawani, Nermine Hammam, Rania Matar and Shirin Neshat, the fourth Iranian artist, who lives in New York.

The curator of the exhibition, Kristen Gresh, noticed something when she started to follow contemporary photography from the Arab world — images she was seeing in exhibitions while living in Cairo and Paris.

“It seemed like the strongest work was made by women,” said Ms. Gresh, 37, the museum’s Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh assistant curator of photographs.

While searching for artists to include in “She Who Tells a Story,” Ms. Gresh had “no specific geographic requirements,” she said. She was simply looking for powerful photographs.

In an introduction to the exhibit, she confronts one challenge it has faced: “Though these photographers challenge stereotypes,” she writes, “the choice to unite them as a group has been seen by some, ironically, as confirming a stereotype.”

But the work of the artists is varied in motivation, subject and form. Ms. Gresh said one uniting theme is the “complexities of identity.”

The phrase “She Who Tells a Story” comes from the word rawiya (which is also the name of a collective of female photographers working in the Middle East). But the exhibit doesn’t tell one story; it tells many.

It begins with work from the 1990s, when Ms. Neshat, in particular, began “breaking boundaries” in terms of representation, Ms. Gresh said. It examines how others have posed similar questions in the years since then — and how photographers like Ms. Neshat, who became known internationally in the ’90s, have grown and changed.

For instance, in her earlier work, Ms. Al-Ani, an Iraqi artist, often explored the meaning of the veil. “She feels like today the veiled woman has so many other connotations that she no longer uses the veil as a device,” Ms. Gresh said.

And so the exhibit includes a newer series by Ms. Al-Ani: a film shot from a plane when the sun was at its lowest point in the sky, exposing parts of the landscape that viewers wouldn’t normally see and upsetting the idea that the Middle East is an empty desert.

Some of the work Ms. Gresh has chosen is more typical of documentary photography. Ms. Matar’s series “A Girl and Her Room” includes portraits of young women in Lebanon and the West Bank posed in their bedrooms (one of which is a small corner of a Palestinian refugee camp).

Ms. Matar’s wider project also includes American subjects. “Girls are girls, no matter where they are, somehow,” Ms. Matar said by telephone from Boston, where she is based. “I mean, they’re going through the same transition, whether they are deciding to wear the veil or whether they are painting their hair pink.”

Ms. Matar, an architect-turned-photographer who was born in Lebanon, said she has always found it important to focus not only on the destruction “but the humanity behind it.”

“It’s refreshing to have this exhibit right now,” she said of “She Who Tells a Story,” “because I think all we’re seeing from the Middle East — it’s sadness, it’s death, it’s killing.”

Ms. Gresh agrees. “I think this is a moment to not be focused on the immediate violence and current events,” she said. “Certainly, some of the deeper questions are present in this work. But it’s a very different point of view and it’s from photographers who either are based there or have roots there.”

The image chosen for the cover of the book, by Ms. Dashti, brings daily life together with war in a stark way. Set in a drab landscape dotted with tanks, the photo shows a couple wearing wedding attire in an abandoned car — “an uncertain vehicle for embarking on a new life,” Ms. Gresh notes in the book (Slide 1).

The photo comes from Ms. Dashti’s 2008 series “Today’s Life and War,” which includes 10 staged narratives focused on the couple. “It’s very much about untold stories of war,” Ms. Gresh said —, and about war’s constant presence.

Ms. Tavakolian said that while the exhibit cannot really not change anything about the current situation in Egypt or elsewhere in the region, what it could do is help “provide people with the opportunity to see some different perspectives from the region.”

Her project that is included in the exhibit, “Listen,” includes portraits of six Iranian women mid-song, posed in front of richly colored sequined curtains (above). The singers’ performances, silent here, are forbidden in Iran.

Ms. Tavakolian, formerly an aspiring singer herself, didn’t seek to provide answers with ”Listen.” She had no agenda. “For me, what mattered,” she wrote in an e-mail, “was the art of singing and the emotions of these singers who want to sing but can’t.”

“She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World” will be on view until Jan. 12 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Untitled #5, Gohar Dashti, Untitled #5, 2008. Chromogenic print. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie White Project, Paris. Copyright Gohar Dashti. Courtesy of MFA, Boston.

Dont Forget This Is Not You (for Sahar Lotfi), Newsha Tavakolian, Dont Forget This Is Not You (for Sahar Lotfi), 2010. Chromogenic print mounted on aluminum. Courtesy of the artist, East Wing Contemporary Gallery and Courtesy of MFA, Boston.

Roja, Shirin Neshat, Roja, 2012. Photograph, gelatin silver print with India ink. Charles Bain Hoyt Fund and Francis Welch Fund. Copyright Shirin Neshat. Courtesy of MFA, Boston.

Women of Gaza 3,Tanya Habjouqa, Women of Gaza 3, 2009. Museum purchase with general funds and the Horace W. Goldsmith Fund for Photography. © Tanya Habjouqa. Courtesy of MFA, Boston.

Alia, Beirut, Lebanon, Rania Matar, Alia, Beirut, Lebanon, 2010. Pigment Print. Courtesy of the artist and Carroll and Sons, Boston. © Rania Matar. Courtesy of MFA, Boston.

Mother, Daughter, Doll series, Boushra Almutawakel, Mother, Daughter, Doll series, 2010. Photograph, chromogenic print (archival C-print). Museum purchase with funds donated by Richard and Lucille Spagnuolo. © Boushra Almutawakel. Courtesy of MFA, Boston.

 

Bullet Revisited #3, Lalla Assia Essaydi, Bullet Revisited #3, 2012. Triptych, three chromogenic prints on aluminum. Courtesy of the artist, Miller Yezerski Gallery Boston, and Edwynn Houk Gallery NYC. Courtesy of MFA, Boston.

Metro #7, Rana El Nemr, Metro #7, 2003. Chromogenic print. Museum purchase with general funds and the Abbott Lawrence Fund. Courtesy of MFA, Boston.

 

A helmet and scarf hang side-by-side in Nil, Nil #4, 2008, by Shadi Ghadirian, a deeply emotional portrayal of the loss and waiting suffered by women left at home while their husbands are fighting Courtesy of MFA, Boston and Boston Magazine.

Via Lens, New York Times

The Sincere Art

In Memory of Sadegh Tirafkan, Iranian artist and photographer

Sadegh Tirafkan, Iranian Man, 2000, digital photo, edition 5 of 6, 64×48 cm. Courtesy AB Gallery Luzern & Zürich and ArtAsiaPacific.

by Mehran Mohajer, ArtAsiaPacific

This past May, the Iranian art community mourned the loss of Sadegh Tirafkan, one of the country’s “new art movement” pioneers, to brain cancer at the age of 47. Known for his innovative blending of photography with other artistic media, Tirafkan was an early proponent of photo-based art in Iran and a prominent international representative of Iranian contemporary art.

Born in Karbala, Iraq, to Iranian parents in 1965, Tirafkan spent his childhood and adolescence in Ahwaz, southern Iran, where he volunteered to join the Iranian army during the war between Iran and Iraq (1980–1988). His early experiments in theater and filmmaking as a teenager led him to apply for a degree in photography at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran on leaving the army. After graduating in 1990, Tirafkan remained committed to developing his own visual idiom, and it was this that set him apart from the many artists whose practices were informed by official narratives, or who were pursuing the dominant current of war-oriented documentary photography.

Though Tirafkan’s early works may ostensibly appear to be documentary in nature, the level of dramatic expression betrays a subconscious tendency toward staging, which can be attributed to his cinematic eye. Tirafkan adopted a method of “constructed photography,” combining the photographic image with hints of painting, a practice developed in tandem with his experiments in new media. His friendship with the painter Parvaneh Etemadi also had a strong impact on his work.

While the exploration and use of traditional Iranian imagery is perhaps common among Iranian artists today, Tirafkan should be credited as one of this style’s originators. Choosing historic sites like Persepolis and Susa as his settings and referencing Iranian post-Islamic history—the Ashura ceremony, Iranian ritual champion wrestling, miniature painting and carpet motifs—Tirafkan introduced themes such as the traditional identity versus the modern identity, notions of the self and the problematizing of male psyche.

In The Iranian Man (2000) and Temptation (2004–5), the conceptual framework of male violence contrasts with the typical aestheticization of the body, creating an unfathomable anxiety. Here, through the direct or indirect use of the genre of self-portraiture, Tirafkan manages ingeniously to integrate the archetypal triple roles of “the artist,” “the narrator” and “the actor”, which frequently appear in traditional, staged studio photography. Covertly, and without disrupting representational norms, Tirafkan poses serious questions about Iran’s patriarchal culture and about society at large.

Tirafkan’s fastidiousness and perseverance pervades the entirety of his oeuvre. In 1986, within the extremely restrained socio-political atmosphere that followed the Cultural Revolution, he, along with some classmates, organized one of the first independent photography exhibitions in Tehran at the Ketab Azad gallery. It is for such examples of dogged commitment to his work that he should be remembered.

Translated by Helia Darabi.

Sadegh Tirafkan’s works are permanently housed in the collections of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, British Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Mehran Mohajer is an Iranian scholar and art photographer. He is a faculty member of University College of Fine Arts, at the University of Tehran and is one of the major translators of photography and art theory textbooks in Iran.

Sadegh Tirafkan, Whispers of the East 7, 2006–7, digital photo collage, edition 5 of 6, 130×72 cm. Courtesy AB Gallery Luzern & Zürich and ArtAsiaPacific.

Sadegh Tirafkan, No. 4,  2012, mixed media with photos, 128×183 cm. Courtesy AB Gallery Luzern & Zürich and ArtAsiaPacific.

Sadegh Tirafkan, Human Tapestry 9, 2011, mixed Media, digital photo with hand knitted carpet frame, edition of 6, 148×185 cm. Courtesy AB Gallery Luzern & Zürich and ArtAsiaPacific.

Sadegh Tirafkan, Whispers of the East 4,  2006–7, digital photo collage, edition 5 of 6, 130×72 cm. Courtesy AB Gallery Luzern & Zürich and ArtAsiaPacific.

Via ArtAsiaPacific