What does it mean to be Iranian? Artists pose the question – in pictures

by marc on Jan 24, 2014 News | Comments Off on What does it mean to be Iranian? Artists pose the question – in pictures

Iranian contemporary artists from the post-revolution period ask what it means to be “authentically Iranian”.

An exhibition at the School of Oriental and African Studies presents post-revolutionary Iranian art to London audiences. The artists on show challenge the assumption of a single national identity and the existence of “authentic Iranianness”.

“Recalling the Future: Post-revolutionary Iranian Art” opened at the Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), on 16 January 2014 and will run until 22 March 2014. The exhibition is co-curated by London-based Iranian curator Aras Amiri, London-based art historian David Hodge, Iranian critic Hamed Yousefi and Iranian artist curator Rozita Sharafjahan.

The show features the work of 25 contemporary Iranian artists, some of whom are exhibiting for the first time in the United Kingdom. The exhibition also includes the work of three influential artists, Ghasem Hajizadeh, Fereydoun Ave and Masoumeh Mozaffari.

Iran’s contemporary art scene

Despite its tumultuous history, today Iran is home to an active contemporary art scene, mostly concentrated in Tehran; Iranian artists are gaining increased international attention thanks to the vibrancy of this scene.

In an interview with The Huffington Post in 2013, Assad Gallery manager Orkideh Daroodi points out that the art scene boasts 150 licensed art galleries. 30 hold regular exhibitions of contemporary Iranian artists and ten are active internationally: Aaran, Etemad, Khak, Shirin, Tarahan-e Azad, Mah, Mohsen, Silk Road, Seyhoun and Daroodi’s own space, Assad.

Helia Darabi, writing for ArtAsiaPacific, notes how the growth of Dubai’s art market in the 2000s was a major driving force behind the growing number of galleries in Tehran. Iranian artists also started fetching record prices at auction in Dubai, which brought Iranian contemporary art into the spotlight. In 2012, Tehran held its first local auction, although most of the art was in line with the government’s moral expectations and limitations.

In fact, in Iran there are still issues of censorship, which make it difficult for artists to express themselves with complete freedom around certain religious and political issues. Censorship starts in the art schools as Professor of Visual Arts at Tehran University Mohammed Ziai tells Der Spiegel, and some daring exhibitions last just a single night.

The Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance still keeps close control on what can and cannot be displayed. In an interview with Al Jazeera in 2012, Nazila Noebashari, owner of Aaran Gallery, says that artists have grown up with such restrictions and, therefore, know how to express themselves using different channels, eluding the eyes of the censors while still conveying their messages in a subtle, unique way.

Questioning ‘authentic Iranianness’

During the 1960s and 1970s, a wave of young artists started producing a new kind of modernist art that also aimed at retaining an ‘authentically Iranian’ identity. By the 1979 Revolution, this issue of authenticity became dear to intellectuals, clergymen and politicians as a form of opposition to western colonisation. Today, ‘authentic Iranianness’ is central in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ideology.

“Recalling the Future” presents the work of contemporary Iranian artists who all question “the assumption that a single, authentic national identity can be found in a country’s history and treated as timeless,” as stated in the curatorial statement. These artists suggest that identities are a construction, made at a particular time and for certain political aims.

As the curators write,

These works do not define an image of ‘Iranianness’ or search for its true meaning in the past – they uncover the processes by which identities are constructed, and consider what kind of a future they might lead to. Above all else, in refusing the idea of timeless identities, these artworks offer the hope that we might be able to take over this process of construction, control it and turn it towards prosperity and change.

Inspiring the younger generation

Ghasem Hajizadeh, Fereydoun Ave and Masoumeh Mozaffari are artists that have influenced and inspired many young contemporary Iranian artists, including those in the exhibition. Hajizadeh puts the manipulation of images at the centre of his practice, creating mixed media paintings based on photographs. Ave also combines images from different sources and media, such as photographs of graffiti and TV screens in his Persian Miniatures series. The artist suggests how tradition is now reproduced through modern technologies.

Tehran’s urban space

Nazgol Ansarinia’s Fabrications comment on the incessant changes in the city’s urban spaces. Her works are based on the recent government-sponsored murals around Tehran, covering building facades with idyllic images of pre-modern traditional Iranian architecture. The 3D models juxtapose both modern and traditional buildings resulting in impossible, absurd spaces that represent the existing contradiction between nostalgia and the ever-changing reality.

Khosrow Hassanzadeh’s Prostitutes is a tribute to the prostitutes who were picked up in the streets of Mashhad and murdered. The series evokes urban spaces in the use of the rough silkscreen technique and the image repetition, emphasising the constructed and planned nature of Iran’s images in and of its cities.

Mapping borders

Mahmoud Bakhshi’s My Land comprises eight maps, each depicting a section of Iran’s border where historical battles took place. The maps are mathematically precise, each labeled with exact geographic coordinates. The materials – dark unpolished iron and rough papier mâché – evoke Iran’s historical violence, the physicality of the soil and the working class labour associated with heavy iron.

Exploring gender inequalities

After the 1960s and 1970s modernist fashion of juxtaposing traditional symbolism with modern (European) styles, some contemporary artists display contradictory techniques to highlight social differences and inequalities. Rozita Sharafjahan and Masoumeh Bakhtiari mix traditionally domestic female labour, such as embroidery and childcare, with technical drawing. Ghazaleh Hedeyat includes raw depictions of the female body viewed through the TV screen or a musical stave.

Revisiting official imagery

Shahab Fotouhi’s Aerial Appendix relates to Ayatollah Khomeini’s journey from Tehran airport to the place of his speech at the cemetery during the 1979 Revolution, upon his return from exile in Paris. Khomeini once called the revolution “the explosion of light” and the artist incorporated this symbolism into his work through the use of neon light.

In Can I Speak to the Manager? the artist depicts the six stages that a draughtsman must go through in order to produce the emblem of the Republic. Foutouhi highlights the bureaucratic organisation through the over-complicated official design process.

Revolutionary Photography

Mehran Mohajer’s Tehran Untitled series of ghostly photographs expresses a sense of desolation. Significantly, the images were made after the mass protests of 2009. In his long-exposure pictures, the city looks empty and almost surreal. The artist has created another dimension of Tehran, a new reality replacing what is already there.

Art, the people and public spaces

Mahmoud Bakhshi’s Talkclouds represent two quotes about the social mission of art. “Art should be for everyone.” is from Andy Warhol, while “Art must blow a spirit of commitment into the people.” is from Ayatollah Khomeini. The use of rusted metal, the roughly cut words and the fluorescent lights all hint at the class differences and inequalities, suggesting that art speaks to, or about not just one kind of viewer, but is instead set within a complicated and shifting socio-political field.

Neda Razavipour and Shahab Fotouhi collaborated on Census, a performative piece involved placing portraits in the windows of an unfinished high rise, with lights behind them that altered in brightness over time. Its title and the tightly cropped portraits mimic the restricting logic of bureaucracy, but this contrasts with the empty, half-finished building – a common sight in the city, which suggests chaotic, disorganised activity.

Graphic Design

Graphic design in Iran is considered a high art like painting and sculpture, and there are many prolific graphic artists. Reza Abedini, a key graphic artist, frequently incorporates images from Shi’a Islam, alongside forms of digitally produced calligraphy and pictures of mundane, everyday objects. Shi’a symbolism is central to the official imagery of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Its harmonious composition, typical of religious art, is in sharp contrast with the rest of the images, creating a shocking effect. Abedini shows how these same symbols can be placed in a completely re-imagined Iranian image world. By doing so, the artist unhinges their meanings, inviting viewers to think about how their idea of the nation has been constructed and whether it could be put together differently.

Other artists recalling the future

• Bijan Akhgar
• Mehraneh Atashi
• Navid Azimi
• Shahrzad Changalvaei
• Homa Delvarai
• Parastou Forouhar
• Farhad Fozouni
• Kaveh Golestan
• Bahman Jalali
• Rana Javadi
• Katayoun Karami
• Aria Kasai
• Amir Mobed
• Iman Raad
• Hamed Sahihi
• Sadegh Tirafkan

 C. A. Xuan Mai Ardia

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Related topics: Iranian art and artists, gallery shows, art and identity, art and the urban environment, Islamic art, events in London, picture feasts

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