About the Curators

Curators

Mahsa Farhadikia is an independent art critic, curator and scholar, who is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA-USA). Her areas of expertise include feminism, modernity, and contemporary art. She was born in 1983 in Tehran and moved to Los Angeles in 2015. She received her MA in Art Research from Tehran University of Art. While in Tehran She served as a curatorial research member of Tehran Biennial’s research team (in collaboration with Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art). Between 2010-2015 she was a lecturer of contemporary art at Iranian universities including Sooreh university of art. Over the last decade, she has worked as an art critic, columnist, and researcher with prominent Iranian art journals and magazines. By writing over one hundred critical reviews and monographs, she tried to play a positive role in the improvement of the inchoate discourse of Iranian art criticism. In 2015 her translation of James Elkins’ seminal book What Happened to Art Criticism? was published by Herfeh-Nevisandeh publications in Tehran. Since moving to Los Angeles, she has worked at various art museums such as the Getty, the Broad and the Wende Museum while working on independent research and curatorial projects.

Aria Eghbal was Born in 1963 in Tehran, Iran. She received her BA in Painting from Alzahra Art University. For the past thirty years she has been working as an artist, as well as an independent art manager and collector, working closely with artists and curators from all around the world. While her area of expertise is Middle Eastern, and specifically Iranian, modern and contemporary art, she has worked with international artists from different countries, showcasing their work in various venues such as Art Expo New York, Art Dubai, Swiss Art Expo, etc. She has organized approximately two hundred art exhibitions in numerous countries such as the United States, Canada, China, Switzerland, France, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Malaysia, and Iran. In recent years, she has been working as an artist, art curator and collector in Los Angeles, while focusing on promoting Iranian and Middle Eastern art to a vaster audience.

Coordinator

Erit Majdipour is an LA based artist and a former art gallery owner. As a gallery owner she held numerous group and solo exhibitions showcasing young talents from different countries including Iran. As an artist, her aim is to bring light to other artists and disseminate their work via art exhibitions. In order to do this, she has kept collaborating with artists and curators across different institutions to support them on their way toward their artistic goals. Specifically, she aims to promote Iranian art and artists to highlight the diverse talent in her community. Her major goal is to support Iranian artists and help them to connect with each other, not only to spark discussion and inspire one another, but also to present a professional discourse of Contemporary Iranian art to the world.

From left to right: Erit Majdipour (Coordinator), Marisa Caichiolo (President and CEO at Biulding Bridges Art Exchange, Aria Eghbal (Curator), Mahsa Farhadikia (Curator), Behnam Osroosh (Graphic Designer)

Curators’ Foreword

Curators’ Foreword

The idea for an exhibition titled What If Not Exotic? took form at a time when international art markets in general, and western art markets in particular, were filled with works of art that present predictable, marketable images based on cliché assumptions about the local lives, identities, and socio-political concerns of artists labeled as “Middle Eastern.”

For the past two decades, with the establishment of new art markets, many new brands with titles such as “Middle Eastern Contemporary Art” have begun to take shape. This general and inaccurate title, ignores the region’s varied history, art, and culture in order to present a reductive and homogeneous concept, suitable for market consumption. The subjects and symbols included in this type of “Neo-Orientalist” art are often like display windows that reflect the market’s demands: some of the main features it represent, include sociopolitical issues presented as repetitive slogans, the insertion of Orientalist elements, and the depiction of exotic spaces.

Due to its geography and the sociopolitical upheavals it has experienced in the decades following the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran is one of the countries that has been a suitable context for the formation of different variations of Neo-Orientalist art. For the last two decades, due to the shifting cultural policies, as well as the active role of private institutions, Iranian artists (particularly younger artists) have seen increasing opportunities to access to the region’s new markets and to present their work on the international scene. These shifts have had a significant impact in shaping this form of art; the type of art that sees itself from the problematically simplified perspective of the western viewer and his expectations, and therefore–intentionally or not–becomes distant from its intimate source material. Meanwhile, longstanding Orientalist projections of western viewers about this historic region, and its recent socio-political tensions and human rights concerns, raised the western viewer’s curiosity. Moreover, Curators, critics, and theorists have also played an important role in shaping the conversations that introduced this dubious artistic trend as the primary representation of contemporary Iranian art.

Inside many Iranian critical circles; however, this type of art is not simply valued because of its exhibition of political elements or symbols that indicate a “national identity”. Instead, art scholars have seriously criticized these works for their reductive and simplistic perspective. This is because, regardless of what the artists claim, the works do nothing to critique or question the status quo. Instead, by reducing a complex situation to a simplistic sentiment, they are ultimately further establishing the very means of reduction. This concern is at the heart of the exhibition What if Not Exotic? An in-depth exploration of contemporary Iranian art that bucks market expectations; featuring instead artworks that reflect the lived experiences of artists, and seeks to consider the varied and complex individuals, rather than the monolith of a singular brand titled “Contemporary Iranian Art”.

This exhibition is an attempt at presenting a realistic image of contemporary Iranian art–as an alternative to the common Neo-Orientalist representations of the “Middle Eastern” art in general and Iranian art in particular–in Western art markets. All the selected works maintain deep and significant connections to their sociopolitical context that fall beyond clichés and common expectations. In other words, they have not resorted to predictable and predetermined subject matters and visual elements to question their current political situation. In fact, these are pieces that have experiential aspects related to real limitations that artists face on a personal and professional level. Therefore, dialogue between these works and the artists’ lived context is a complex interwoven one that affects different aspects of the process: from the artists’ choice in media, to the size and the color palette, and from the style and formal language, to the subject matter. The exhibition is arranged in four main sections. In each section, a significant and emblematic aspect of Iranian art and life is examined: Public Spheres, Private Interiors,The Body; from defiance to deformation, and Memory; From Personal to Collective.

Public spheres refer to the places where individual desires and ruling order intersect. But in a public space where the expression of individuality as an active agent is reduced to the extreme, the experience of life is accompanied by a sense of alienation and passivity. This sense of bewilderment can be found in the present works both in subject matter and form, whether it is in their depiction of spaces in neutral colors or the angle of the camera. We selected works that go beyond a direct depiction of the contradictions between individuality and the prevailing rule of law, and instead show the bewilderment, alienation, and isolation of the individual in the public realm; a situation well described by Sohrab Sepehri the contemporary Iranian poet in his poem, “Us nil, us a look”.

When the public sphere becomes a space of control and surveillance, the private and interior spheres turns into a shelter where the individual can temporarily take refuge from social pressures. This form of escapism sometimes manifests itself in an obsessive attention to interior spaces in the form of still lifes and representations of human relations in the relatively safe confines of interiors. However, governing policies and social pressures are not only present in the public realm, but can easily bleed into the private space as well. Despite private spaces providing relatively safe havens where one can find refuge from ruling orders and experience the reprieve of intimate relations (such as Farzaneh Ghadianloo’s Thursdays series of photographs), even such spaces are not entirely free from the misery and irritations that exist in the public sphere. This fleeting privacy can indeed exacerbate one’s awareness of surveillance and control (such as Kathamandu series of photographs by Ali Nadjian and Ramyar Manouchehrzadeh).

Another way that contemporary artists practice escapism is by turning to a more personal past that has semi-universal elements. In these selected works the reference to the past is not achieved by inserting national-identity-related symbols (as is often the case in contemporary Neo-Orientalist works), but by using family photographs and personal artifacts as a means of memory akin to time travel, artists are allowed to explore their own lived experience even as it may unfold against a larger social backdrop.

The final group present in the current exhibition utilizes works that address the body as a means of experience. Here the body reacts to violence and isolation by becoming deformed and revealing physical attributes left by pain. Through technique and form, as well as elements representative of suppression, we are faced with the abject reality of a body that has been suppressed and tormented without any intermediary to comfort us. (Such as the human figure drawings of Shaya Shahrestani).

Although the present exhibition has no claims about being a complete all-encompassing representation of Iranian art, what it does claims to present is a more realistic version of a nation’s artistic dynamics where economic and political limitations can lead to a complicated, individualized, and extremely experiential effect on the works. Finally, if the juxtaposition of these pieces can present a meaningful alternative to the previous (and problematic) singular voice that has been heralded as “Contemporary Iranian Art”, then we can claim to have reached our objective of presenting multiple voices from among the complex phenomenon that is contemporary Iranian art.

Aria Eghbal – Mahsa Farhadikia

First Pressbook Meet: Exhibition as the General!

Art Analysis

Artificial History!

“History Found” is the title of the fourth episode of the collection “Revealing Realities” by Mehdi Moghim-Nejad which was exhibited in February 2012 at Mohsen Gallery. The Revealing Realities collection was the result of efforts by the artist in photomontage transformation technique and pictures created in the framework of images which do not easily reveal that they are artificial at first glance. In “History Found”, like the first, second, and third episodes, the artist has adopted a psychological approach towards the issues of common national and historical identity of human beings. If in the first episode of this collection, namely “The Scattered Dream of a Long Day,” the artist depicts a day hidden in his individual subconscious through travels and trips in the nature as a communal location, in the second episode, namely “Within the Oriental Winds” he crystallizes the fearful and scary aspects and nightmares of the atmospheres related to the Iranian history. In “History Found” history and the remaining parts of it, namely the parts which are constituents of the national identity and collective subconscious, appear as a form of a person’s dream, the only difference is that the artist in this collection is again more distant from the reality and approaches with a take beyond reality.

In this episode, in continuation of the previous episodes we are faced with a victory over the foggy and dreamlike atmosphere and photography in natural scenes, just like the dream of a person who dreams somewhere which belongs to an unspecified time and resembles a place he has already seen but is not any of those places. If we consider that the collective subconscious contains the legacy of history and its implications and the related meanings, the artist forms this dark and hidden side with a subjective and personal look and also by extracting parts from the heart of history. The gray images from an arid land and an unfertile desert in a foggy and abandoned condition while the recycled parts are generally ruined and destroyed from the historical-artistic works are the only pivotal subjects of the frame: From the statues dating back to the pre-Islam era in Iran to the Blue Mosque in Tabriz, the broken urn and the potteries from Neishabour, the mythological paintings of Shahnameh at the 4^th Century AH, the miniatures related to the post-Islam era and the Qajar prince. The atmosphere created in this collection is highly apocalyptical, as if the world has come to the end and we are witnessing the last remains of it. We might only hear the distant howling of the wind within the absolute silence of the atmosphere. Despite the diversity in the historical elements of this collection, we should not forget that these elements do not introduce the particular names or different historical periods of art, as it is known, but the presence of national identity elements are symbolized as a whole in the realm of the collective conscious. These images, which are sometimes registered as photomontage on slates and desert land and sometimes stand as a minaret or part of an old monument or a statue, are considered the only colorful elements among the dominant gray atmosphere of these works. Although, in this collection the artist takes advantage of the photos he has taken on his trips to different corners of Iran in many years, the desert is intentionally de-identified by the dominance of the fog, as well as the black and white color, so attentions would be drawn to the tiling, designs and statues. It seems as if these symbols related to the national identity are the only bright points of the historical oblivion of a mind which are never thoroughly buried; these are the common past we drag everywhere with us, although in our subconscious memories.

Even thought, Moghim-Nejad’s perception in this collection is still tied to the history, “History Found” more than anything else raises a serious obsession about the medium of photography spontaneously and puts forth its ratio with reality. When faced with this collection, prior to any efforts to read the symbols this question occurs to us: “Is the picture before me a real one?” And when we realize that the answer is negative, the technique by which the photographer achieves such realism becomes thought-provoking. Therefore, meaning implications in the hierarchical system is subdued to the second degree of importance and the artist passes through the conduit of paradox in the process of getting to the meaning: He creates concepts through a modern involvement with the medium and technique along the conduit of “art for art.” He also does another seemingly paradoxical action and encodes the work of art ambivalently and in a two-fold way: It means he tries to accurately and “realistically” construct the destruction and ruins. He assembles the destruction, constructs it and injects it to the core of the picture in order to create his own concepts. The result is pictures which are formally possible and are in accordance with the logic of realism, but in fact they are real only in the realm of the artificial pictorial logic of the artist.

In his writings, Baudrillard says: “On the spot the virtual action takes place, it overcomes reality and then without any changes turns into its alternative.”

A similar process goes on in this collection; the elements assembled on the background of the picture enter the image’s framework from the outside boundaries of that photo, therefore, taking the picture’s “reality” into consideration, the alien elements are “virtual” and are created by construction. However, after they enter the picture and, of course, after placement with an accurate and powerful technique, they become part of the work as if they have been there for centuries and are considered an inseparable reality of the picture. Hence, the logic of picture with its specific “reality”, namely a dream-like reality, finally makes us convinced and the work in its development process transforms from “objectivity” to “subjectivity”: these pictures are considered opposing sides.

Photomontage, as a synthesizing technique, has resulted in a sort of irony, and equivocalness in the climax of its function in the works of Berlin Dadaists and Surrealism artists and has made radial criticism in the works of artists such as Hannah Hoch. It seems this technique forms at a time when the existing “reality” seems insufficient and the artist seeks to artificially construct a reality beyond the existing reality. Man Ray has said: “I paint something that I cannot take a photo of.” Photomontage is, in fact, an inter-disciplinary technique which pushes construction and painting composition into the world of photography and changes the reflection rules of photography without straightforwardly denying the specific aesthetics of this field. However, contrary to the common trend of photomontage in conveying the message, implications and other concepts of the type, Moghim-Nejad still leaves the audience with freedom to find the direction of meaning in a suspenseful manner. He never aims at over-symbolism or over-verbalization and although his involvement with the medium marks a modernist aspect, his works – contrary to many contemporary works – potentially yield to numerous interpretations. He sets off with his personal experience of photography during his trips around the country and his passion for that, and gets to creating concepts and at the end leaves photographic paintings for us. In spite of the fact his collection takes up photography with a historical-psychological approach, it is still more of photography than anything else.

Mahsa Farhadi-Kia

February 2012

From Myth to Satire

“Therefore I ordered them to extract the cuspid of the crickets so I extracted confessions out of them that how many times they had licked the nation’s luminaries? My hands do not reach my feet unless I feel I’m a tomato and in the living room, I gave words to Zahhak that I would become a vegetarian. And I signed a peace treaty with the 16 grasshoppers that had attacked the farms in the south so they would all move along the economic development plan, right in the direction of the oil pipelines.” Mostafa Choub-Tarash

The above excerpt is the title of the recent exhibition by Mostafa Choub-Tarash. The artworks were exhibited in February 2012 at the E’temad Gallery. The title of the exhibition shows this collection is different: By placing one of his short stories instead of the title of his work, the artist has taken a satirical look at the story of Zahhak as a mythological icon. His approach towards history and mythology in the realm of writing and visual art is a practical example of “New Historicism” approach towards history and literature: reading history, art and literature not based on the social context of the time the work was created, but according to the necessities of the readers’ and critics’ time.

In this collection, Choub-Tarash goes through history anew. Reviewing familiar narratives and allegories which are registered on the collective mind of a nation and playfully adopting an ambivalent approach towards icons and historical myths, put the post-modern artist at the position of a theoretician who deconstructs myths and renders a different, and most-of-the-time ambivalent and satirical reading of the past works by tampering with their aura of “originality.” This sometimes appears through the childish action of drawing mustache on the portrait of Mona Lisa – as a symbol of the golden age in the history of art and intellectualism – and sometimes in the form of copying the originality of a famous work and deconstructing the work of art.

Deconstruction in this collection takes place by applying minor changes to the pictures from the history of art. Pictures which contain events that form the collective unconscious of people and form their wide system of values, and beliefs. In here, the familiar pictures of books on the history of art or lithographic images with gray acrylic and the usual inexperienced style of the artist are drawn on the canvass, and the artist tries to unify the whole work as a historical myth not by emphasizing on the narrative or a certain character but by implementing only one color. Hence, the variety of the images should not act as an obstacle to reading the entire collection.

There are images of King Shapur the First’s victory over the Roman Empire, the romantic narrative of Homay and Homayoun, Rostam’s battle with the Akvan Demon and the King Sultan Hossein Safavi and the Zahhak monarchy. However, the post-modern take on the work of art with the present and past is by no means straightforward and rule-governed as it is expected, but history turns into a basis to reveal internal conflicts and ironies and incorporates with the present time to form an ironic situation. In this collection satire and destruction appear as colorful designs which are sprayed or painted onto the work like a graffiti in a destructive, speedy and childish way. The past and future meet each other in an ironic fashion, Zahhak goes vegetarian and Rostam has a bouquet of flower in his hand instead of dagger and the ceremony of Awarding Divine Splendor turns into drawing pistols on each other. Therefore, the artist makes a two- or multi-fold encoding of all the works: paintings as a sublime art and the artist’s hand-drawn paintings on the piece of art as an ornament.

Reviewing and changing the stories and historical myths from Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood to Hamlet and toppling the hero to an anti-hero and vice versa, is the process of tampering with narratives which are deeply rooted in the realm of history, history of art and folkloric stories and allegories and their implications and results are well-seated in the collective beliefs and have turned into a part of culture and value system of people. The playfulness and destruction is in fact part of revealing relativity and conflict at the core of accepted certainties. A process which introduces post-modern art as a representative of “doxa” art and counter-nature-oriented, in a way presenting one of the numerous macro-narratives of an event instead of only a micro-narrative is acceptable. Rostam is an example of chivalry and athletics and has turned into a modern Don Juan and attacks the Akvan Demon – who has now transformed into a ridiculous beauty – with a bouquet of flower instead of his dagger. King Soleiman is hanged in the festival of musicians and the fable of Homay and Homayoun changes into a flashy modern view of flying hearts. Therefore the borders defined between concepts such as being honorable and ridiculous, divinity and sublimity and anger, platonic love and backstreet songs shatters under the pretext of tampering with icons of history of art. The plural and conflicting situation, which formed the basis for position of human beings in the post-modern and contemporary era, is clearly evident in these works. A position in which the narratives of “true”, “real” and “original” are nothing but imagination and illusion. A situation which is well-defined in the following quotation by Baudrillard:

“Belief in truth… is the weak point of perception and common sense… really no one believes in reality… our belief in reality and its proof is shameful. Truth is something to be sneered at. There may be some people who dream of a culture in which they laughs upon hearing “this is true, this is real”… pretentions have turned into realities! … Now, the act of pretending puts a lid not on the reality but the point that there is nothing, or in other words, on the continuation of absurdity.”

Mahsa Farhadi-Kia

February 2012

Azadi Station

Alireza Ma’soumi presented his new sculpture-installation collection at E’temad Gallery entitled “Azadi Station”. The quality of non-radical criticism, yet philosophical and rational inclinations among ethnographic characteristics at Ma’soumi’s works help cogitate on structural beliefs and old social models. Plurality and repetition in this collection represent public and underlying culture and beliefs, hence the harmony between the style and content of works, as we will witness, clearly highlights the importance of this collection among avant-garde and exciting – and in most of the cases the superficial – works of art these days.

When the logic of repetition in minimalism stepped into the realm of the Conceptual Art, it symbolized the structural, rational, indifferent and non-excited system of thinking. The function of this logic was not radical social criticism but assessing the mechanism of structures which form the contemporary life, thought, and language. In his recent collection, Ma’soumi has shown numerous and repetitious hands which are stuck out of earth, the ceiling and the walls; they are stretched out, deformed and hanging on the golden bar of the bus which gives them a ride to the “Azadi Station.” The idea of grabbing, wrestling, and leaning in this collection are reminiscent of the Oriental perception of the old model of “pinning hope on the others,” the wide open eyes which are taken away from the earth and individual human beings and are gazing skywards after a period of drought on the land; now they are looking for Azadi (freedom) in a vehicle whose controllable or otherwise wayward qualities determine whether they will get to the destination or not. This ironic point is quite obvious in the bars which act as the support and reliance. They are cut down and, therefore, have lost their function as a savior; yet despite this the hands are stretched out to get something which is not supported by anything. It tells the story of a society which stretches its hands to grab this useless object and each individual tries to take over from others to possess this and ask others what they already have.

In another corner, there is an old and rusty door of a bus on which it reads “Enghelab-Azadi” route. Taking advantage of symbolism through elements such as intercity transportation means as a hub of social gathering, plurality and socializing of people from different strata, or the presence of colors which represent the flag as another symbol of plurality culture have enriched these works with the pop art coding. Although, contrary to the mainstream trend in which the function of these elements were not social criticism or the praise but merely representing these daily elements, in this collection the elements of pop art show up from a critical perspective.

Though, works by Alireza Ma’soumi in “Azadi Station” adopts a symbolism approach, rather than employing familiar symbols such as a flag or equivocal names to drive at a political criticism, they have a sociological or ethnographic approach towards Oriental societies, including Iran. These societies are “human-based” and individual thinking is replaced by blind support for common beliefs, a way of thinking which looks for happiness somewhere out of itself and in the hands of the others, therefore its existence always depends on a vehicle to take it to the destination: a vehicle which is not always controllable.

Mahsa Farhadi Kia

February, 2012

Extraterrestrial

Extraterrestrial exhibition is a selection of art works by Babak Etminani, Mahsa Karimizadeh, and Shaya Shahrestani which was held in November 2012. The works were selected by Babak Etminani and were showcased in his gallery. The collection was based on a scientific-intuitive approach and was a success in line with the previous efforts by Etminani to ponder the mysteriousness of the universe and its uniqueness from the microscopic level to the galaxies and the black holes.

The collection of Revelation by Etminani includes works created in acrylic technique on canvass and is a continuation of the Gray collection; a homogeneous surface which is similar to lead and made of vacuum on whose surface organic circles appear which sometimes look like unicellular organisms and microscopic particles and sometimes look like volcanic lava. Unlike the Gray collection, this time we see inclusion of blue, yellow and red onto the colorful surfaces. As in the past, these works take the mind to the depth with an extraordinary power; in Etminani’s works there is no trace of abstraction, because forms are not only not detached from nature, but quite contrarily, depict the invisible layers behind the nature with a direct, immediate, and cogitative power, namely those layers which transcend the nature itself. It seems we have become microscopic and can traverse into the depth of quantum and colored quarks and plunge into the depth of the internal discovery. The revelation by Etminani, although carried out individually, represents a universal and common language, the unity between the part and the whole, internal and external, the micro and macro world, and the human being and the universe are the elements before him which move beyond the language and geographical borders. The artist’s intentional and selective paintings are in a minimal position, and as color and material in his works behave somewhat spontaneously and in accordance with nature, it is because of this absence of conflict in the process of painting that some critics theorize his style in the framework of Post-Painterly Abstraction, though efforts to place him in the conventional styles seem to be useless, because the accidental elements in his works are in accordance and harmony of function with chance and contrast in nature, rather than a painting technique, and they are the result of an immediacy, not a self-made product.

The works by two other young artists are also put beside Etminani’s works in terms of ontological obsessions and in a rhythm based on harmony. Mahsa Karimizadeh’s works are statues made of fiberglass and oil paint titled “the Curvature of Space” which are hung up on the wall in black and red colors. Taking into consideration the form and title, the works touch upon the concept of curvature of space as a result of gravity and creation of black time and energy in black holes and the growth of existence from where there is obviously absolute inexistence. Shaya Shahrestani records everything in nature in the framework of oil paint on fiberglass, the curves and bumps on the metallic surface which has a texture similar to the landing of meteorites and their impact on the soil and it is also similar to fossils found in nature. Beyond these formal and symbolic associations, simultaneous with inclination to abstraction, the focus is on the content of the work and recording the immortality of all universe, a theory whose function in all the world of physics is based on recording all events revolving around the third orbit of atoms nucleus.

Extraterrestrial is a bridge between awareness of the audience and the complexity and superiority of the nature which turn artists into unassuming mediums who touch upon the innermost, undeniable, communal and universal part of human beings: A reality which is invisible because it is extremely overt, just like a writing which becomes an illegible text when it is very close to the eyes.

Mahsa Farhadikia

Suddenly Love…

“It seems as if we have yielded to the Victorian system from long time ago and even today we follow that. A royal sanctimony shows off on our hidden, silent and hypocritical sexuality” Michel Foucault

Ramin Etemadi Bozorg returned to Mohsen Gallery this May with the collection of We Have Observed Love.

When we step into the gallery some seductive parts of body, which are twisted into each other, are awaiting to surprise us. The excitement while facing with the forbidden dialogue of pleasure is the theme of this exhibition. To counter the dominance of censorship dialogue, the artist in this collection takes advantage of a similar weapon, namely the censorship itself. By crossing out the body parts and by bringing in non-risky and generally asexual organs like limbs, Etemadi wisely depicts an “illegitimate” affair in a “legitimate” framework.

In his previous two collections of Etemadi, I mean “the Documents of Ramin Etemadi Bozorg” and “the Documents of a Tragedy” he has formed the direct participation of audience of the artwork; however, in the present collection this participation exists in another form. The viewers’ imagination power was supposed to guess the artist’s omitted parts and hence a challenge would be created when faced with every artwork, as if they are completing an enticing jigsaw puzzle of the creation. Non-risky parts of body, like arms and legs, are twisted into each other and engaged in making love and they invite the audience to watch the absent presence; in fact the effect of what is not seen but is part of the relationship of these bodies which are silenced and left out.

The realm of sexuality in the contemporary Iranian artists’ works is an uncharted and perforce less-trodden territory. While reviewing the ancient history of Iran in the labyrinth of the One-Thousand-and-One Night Stories and the relationship between the masters and maids, the butlers and the women in Harem those representations could be traced in the literature and also in a number of paintings, especially the paintings in the Isfahan school. It shows the reigning silence over sexuality, at least in the realm of art, is a relatively contemporary phenomenon. But to break the silence in collections, as is the case in the recent collection of Etemadi, is an outlet from the dialogue of power which is dominant over the dialogue of S-E-X. In here when we talk about power, we necessarily don’t mean the power which imposes bans and restrictions on behalf of the religious or legal authorities, but a power which is formed at the heart of social culture and has imprisoned sexuality, confines it to homes and denounces any function apart from reproduction and seeks to organize the relationship. A function which, in Foucault’s views, leads to more sexual drives by creating restrictions. In fact, the audience of this exhibition are indirectly invited to take a sneak peek at some angels of privacy at one of the most public institutions of the society. In essence the appeal for this forbidden affair stems from the very characteristic.

Ramin Etemadi Bozorg in this collection takes us to watch an anthem of freedom. The feeling after this exhibition is similar to the feeling after confession; pleasing and lighthearted. Michelle Foucault in this extraordinary work, The History of Sexuality, writes: “… but maybe there is another reason which makes the relationship between S-E-X and power based on suppression so much satisfactory for us; something which may be called the speaker’s benefit. If sex is suppressed it means it is sentenced to restriction and omission and silence; merely talking about it and talking about suppressing it is a willful violation and he who uses such a language, puts himself outside the realm of power, infringes upon the law and, though in small amount, facilitates the prospective freedom.”

Suddenly

Love

Like the Sun

Throws away the mask

And shines on the rooftops and every door

Like a manifestation

Shines like a lightning

And when it fades away

The human being rises up

Along the Wound

Mohammad Mehdi Tabataba’i brought the “Nameless” collection to Tarrahan Azad (Freelance Designers) Gallery in December 2012. The collection, though semiotically in line with the artist’s previous collections, stylistically announced his entry into a more realistic realm.

The works in this exhibition are divided into two categories: three works by the artist from his previous collection titled “You Were Busy Dying” and the rest of the works in the recent Nameless collection. As it implies “You Were Busy Dying” is the story of internal decadence, the routine life, the decline and downfall of human beings who are shown fading away and are close to decline and oblivion in a gray background with thin colors and a special design, while there is a fresh and flashy rose in the foreground plan which covers part of the body and mostly lips, therefore it creates a clear paradox between “being” and “pretending” or “what we are” and “what we pretend.”

In these works, the artist has incorporated photography techniques into painting, exactly like the time a photographer focuses on a subject and the background stage is pushed into the depth of oblivion and ambiguity and by doing so successfully depicts content within the framework of form as well as the relevant and meaningful technique.

However, the Nameless collection hardly yields to decoding and reading the coding of this collection is to a great extent tied to the familiarity with the artist’s background and his works. The limbless and sometimes decapitated dolls of the previous collections show up in here as well, but they have become more three-dimensional, with bigger mass and so close to reality that they are horrifying, annoying, and pathetic. In one of the works, there are thirteen decapitated dolls on top of each other that you feel anytime they might slip on each other and jump out of the painting and fall just in front of you. From a realistic perspective and also the black background of the works, this collection seems to be a continuation of the “Ailments” collection in terms of content and form, which is an effective and creative narration of the artist’s personal life. The artist takes advantage of Triscupids in this collection as well and if the child was entangled in a mass of medical transcriptions and diets in that collection, the wooden horse is torn up into two halves in this one and masculine busts and other parent-like figures impose this restriction.

However, besides the familiar and repetitious element of doll or child which symbolizes doll, Tabataba’i intentionally and impassably puts the audience before an ambiguity. He writes in the statement for the exhibition: “… but when a collection gains name for itself, it imposes a specific reading on the audience which is influenced by the title of the collection and turns the audience into a partner for reading the artistic work, therefore the audience pays attention to the work under its title. That’s why this collection was named Nameless so the audience would not be obsessed with the name and have their own reading of the work without any presupposition.”

Even though works without any title are commonplace in naming artistic works, merely avoiding a title for works which are very general so they would act as a mirror for the audience or for works which are very abstract, like those by Pollock, in which titles are in practice imposition of a name for an unlimited general and endless implications, do not necessarily give the audience a free rein to dissect the meaning of the work.

We should accept that today artistic works are not merely paintings on the wall, but the statement, the title, the gallery’s atmosphere, lighting, decoration or even the criticisms on the work all lead to the formation of a work of art and, as each of them are engaged in demarcating the borders and determining the realms, they will not restrict the audience’s reading if they do not fall into over-revelation and superficiality.

Mahsa Farhadikia