Author: Mahsa Farhadikia

Borderline Exhibition-Opening Reception Introduction

Curated by: Mahsa Farhadikia, Mandy Palasik, Brandi Sjostrom, Naomi Stewart

Artists: Janna Avner| Michael Chang|Evelyn Contreras|Christian Franzen|Richelle Gribble |Gottfried Haider|Julian Lombardi|Ariel Maldonado|Mandy Palasik|Allison Peck|Gazelle Samizay|Weng San Sit|Joshua Thomen

January 22 – March, 13 2021

Angels Gate Cultural Center

San Pedro, California

Hi everyone. Thank you all for joining us tonight. My name is Mahsa Farhadikia, an la-based independent curator, art critic and a member of AICA-USA. Tonight I am here as one of the co-curators of Borderline exhibition to discuss some of the main thematic frameworks of the exhibition. My pronouns are she/ her, and I am a woman with long blond hair wearing a black jacket and there is a green wall behind me. My curatorial interests include emerging and marginalized artists, contemporary art’s dilemmas, gender studies, post-colonial subjects and contemporary curatorial approaches. The introduction I am going to read to you tonight is an excerpt from an article I wrote for the exhibition catalog. You can find the main text in Borderline exhibition catalog available on Angles Gate Culatural Center Website. 

Borderline exhibition starts with an ambiguous, playful metaphor. As inferred by its title, it plays with the references to a mental disorder of the same name, which as defined by psychologists occupies an in-between space in the spectrum of mental diseases. In its psychological definition, “The term borderline originally came into use when clinicians thought of the person as being on the border between having neuroses and psychosis, as people with a diagnosis of BPD experience elements of both.” Due to this definition, a borderline includes implications to an indeterminate and unsettled situation as well as to social categorization leading to hierarchization and stigma.  

Borderline exhibition questions the notion of a borderline as it associates to the notion of categorization. Classification and categorization are among the tools humans have used throughout history to understand the world. Specifically, the exhibition questions the objective approaches dominant in the western logic and their efforts to put the world as the subject of knowledge “in order”.

The exhibition’s theme is based on challenging the certainty which is a result of drawing borders and defining categories both in social contexts and in ontological ones. On a social level, categorization has been used to put people in groups such as: “members”, “nonmember”, “insiders” and “outsiders.” As a result, drawing borders seems to be one of the most fundamental stages in the process of othering. Accordingly, what seems to be the harmless and even “rational” act of categorization has led to extreme demonization, xenophobia, homophobia, and other types of phobia. On an ontological level and inspired by scientific discoveries such as theory of relativity, the previously objective approaches toward categorization have been replaced by more subjective perspectives in contemporary thinking.

In view of such a major scientific revolution, other areas of knowledge, including philosophy and art, have undergone fundamental discursive shifts as well. Accordingly, we live in an era that has emerged from the ruins of certainty and absolute beliefs. Postmodern mistrust in the metanarratives of modernity such as rationality and progress, along with more traditional grand narratives, is born out of the ideas of relativity and uncertainty. As a result, the legitimacy of putting concepts, people, and objects into discrete categories is being fiercely questioned by the naturally existing chaos and disorder of the universe and its philosophical implications brought to the fore by contemporary discourse.

The idea of an exhibition titled Borderline is shaped out of this philosophical and socio-political necessity to explore the subjective nature of predefined categories by raising questions about the nature of a borderline as a determinative element in creating spheres of meaning. However, choosing such a theme might raise questions such as: why do we need to bring into attention the importance of the blurriness and constructedness of the borderlines, the overlapping of territories, and the eclectic nature of realities, if they already exist on various levels? The answer is that despite the paradigmatic shifts, it seems that at least on the societal level (if not on a philosophical one), we are still prescribing skepticism toward certainty rather than describing it as our existing reality or portraying it as our lived experience. In fact, the borderlines outlining different social categories based on criteria such as gender, age and race, are surprisingly still among the most problematic realities of our time. Sorting people according to what are their “common features,” has resulted not only in extreme superficiality but also in hierarchizing of relations between the groups.

Borderline exhibition also adopts the literary theory of intertextuality to explore the eclectic, multi-coded nature of phenomena. As Julia Kristeva the Blugarian-French literary critic defines it, intertextuality means each text is a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another. While intertextuality has been mainly used for discussing the notions of influence and inspiration in art and literature and consequently to address issues of authorship and plagiarism in these fields, Borderline exhibition takes concepts such as influence to address a whole different issue. In fact, the curatorial framework of the exhibition, approaches intertextuality as a philosophical paradigm shift that undermines the borders between texts and exposes their eclectic, polyphonic nature.  Thus, intertextuality, in its very core, delves into the structural relationships between texts and shows how each text is inherently made up of other texts, or in other words, how each text opens to “infinite play of relationships with other texts or semiosis.” Consequently, there is a close relationship between intertextuality as a literal theory and Postmodernism and the Borderline exhibition particularly aims to scrutinize the postmodern aspects of intertextuality such as: relationality, eclecticism, and interconnectedness of texts, not in the context of literature, but as they apply to arts in terms of form, aesthetics, material, and concept.

The exhibition contains three different and at the same time overlapping sub-themes, namely: identity, medium, and space. While we do not claim absolute comprehensiveness with these sub-themes, we believe these are among the most critical areas, on both artistic and societal levels, in which the function of borderlines has resulted in exclusivity, othering, and hierarchization. Works have been selected for this exhibition with an aim to raise questions about the “either/or,” black /white, and in one-word dichotomic approaches. The installation of the exhibition itself is a metaphorical representation of the fragility, temporariness, constructedness, and arbitrariness of the borders between the categories it defines. Therefore, instead of installing the pieces in a traditional curatorial order – which means placing each piece in the space allocated to its respective sub-theme- the pieces literally break into adjacent spaces, this irony is supposed to encourage viewers to question the certainty of thematic borders. This layout also creates a visual equivalent to the interconnectedness of territories and uncertainty of the borderlines that define them. Moreover, by “breaking” the homogeneity of the categories that we have already defined for the viewers and disrupting their specified spots, we address the inherent, uncertain and eclectic nature of the conceptual spaces of the exhibition. In fact, the presence of a piece within the thematic section to which it did not originally “belong” is a visual allegory to the situation that Gerard Genet, the French literary theorist, defines as “the actual presence of one text within another.”


 
 

Radical Women

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985 was the last show exhibited at the Hammer Museum in 2017. The exhibition was part of the Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a vast series of exhibitions showcased in various art venues all across Southern California focusing on Latin American art in dialogue with Los Angeles as a city with deep historical roots in Latin America. The exhibition forms around the connections and tensions between artists’ sexuality as women and repressive political systems dominated in Latin American countries at the time. The name “Radical Women” implies the extensive tendency towards radicalism in western feminist art during the same period of time, while the huge difference between Latin American women artists and their Western counterparts is that Latin artists had to combat in another battleground instead of gender equality. This larger battleground is nothing but the repressions, took place under ruling dictatorship regimes. As Helen Molesworth, The MOCA’s former chief curator, noted in the exhibition’s press release: “The lives of many of the artists featured in Radical Women were thus enmeshed in experiences of authoritarianism, imprisonment, exile, torture, violence and censorship”. Therefore the exhibition not only presents what these artists share with their Western counterparts in terms of gender equality, but it also explores the way they respond to their specific socio-political issues as Latin women artists in a critical period of time.

Being revealed is one of the most important trends in this exhibition. This includes different aspects, from personal and individual self-expression to more political commentaries. The act of revealing functions as a subversive strategy to the dominated discourse of repression and if one considers repression as a tool for dictatorships to hide what opposes their ideologies, then the process of revealing could be revolutionary by itself.
In an hour and a half, a series of four black and white photographs from 1975, Mexican artist Lourdes Gorbet was photographed while trying to emerge from a sheet of metallic paper stretched on a frame during a performance. While an hour and a half alludes to the famous Botticelli masterpiece, The Venus Birth, Gorbet appropriates the notion of birth in a modern and realistic way, quite different from the symbolic birth of Venus as the goddess of love, beauty, and inspiration. The artist has dressed modern and casually to symbolize herself as a modern woman artist who is looking to be visible in the real world of society as well as in the world of art. Here the act of revealing has a very basic function, which is as simple as being seen and legitimized as a woman artist.
Three years later, Chicana artist Yolanda Lopez, in a series of self-portrait photographs, mimics Venus while having a bunch of brushes in her hand and standing in front of a shell-like background. While her heroic, radical, and determined gesture addresses her ambitions as a woman artist to be discovered, her constant smile and humble outfit, beside the intentional amateur style of photographs creates an ironic atmosphere. This irony was created playfully to question the mythological symbolic value of a woman and substitute it with a more humble, real, and even funny woman artist for whom being valuable isn’t equal to being elevated to the level of a goddess. In contrary as the gesture shows, her demands in a patriarchal society are as simple as being visible and to be able to work freely.

In addition to revealing themselves as women artists, some other artists focus on the female body as a site for discrimination and repress. While revealing the natural mechanisms of the female body, such as menstruation, giving birth, and sexual excitements, was a recurrent theme in the radical realm of feminist body art and performance art of 70s, in a performance piece called Ritual in Honor of Menstruation (1981) , Colombian artist Maria Evelia Marmolejo expressed her female sexuality by addressing the similar concerns in a radical feminist way. Although Evalina’s menstruation ritual is not complicated, it is certainly allegorical. By uncovering her genitals and letting her menstrual blood drip on the floor, and by rubbing her pubic area against the wall to leave an imprint of her blood, she brings one of the most body-related female taboos to the public sphere. As the performance name signifies, this is not just a simple act of revealing a natural feminine mechanism, but is rather that of a celebration of feminine menstruation as a strong and authoritative gesture opposed to menstruation’s traditional implications of weakness and wickedness.
Far from nudism as a way to address discrimination and imbalanced power relations, Liliana Porter mediates on revealing the representational nature of body. She manipulates her own self-portrait by drawing a rectangle, half on her face and half on the background wall. She deploys a strategy similar to “alienation” in Brecht theaters: by adding an unexpected element, she disturbs the unity of represented female portrait as something real or natural. She seems to reiterate the representational nature of the female portrait by juxtaposing it with an unexpected element.

The most haunting part of the exhibition is where politically charged works are interspersed with earlier feminist works. In Chilean artist Garcia Berrios’s America I don’t invoke your name in vain from 1970, she takes a critical stance against Salvador Allende’s social democratic government in power at the time. A group of shadowlike people in black are emerging slowly from the canvas while their legs are being cut by the bottom edge of the canvas, reiterating the threatening sense that they are walking out of canvas into the real world. These faceless figures address the silent majority of people opposing dictatorships all across Latin American countries and their potential for prospective uprising and revenge.

In Gloria Camiruaga’s video: Popsicle (1982-84), sensual and political are intertwined in a playful way. Teenage girls sensually lick popsicles only to find plastic soldiers at the end. Aside from curators’ interpretation of the work as an implication of the militarized society under Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, the video addresses the hidden violence threatening women in patriarchal societies in general, even underneath sweet and tempting sensual pleasures. By reciting “Hail Mary” while licking their popsicles, the girls imply how the interconnectedness between female pleasures and violence have turned into a sacred ritual of masochism. Finally, by showing innocent teens doing an innocent job in an ambiguous way, the work comments on the uncertainty of the terms such as “innocent” and “erotic.”

Radical Women, along with other LA/LA project exhibitions, provided us with a great opportunity to explore the invisible art of Latin female artists. Such exhibitions should and do bring us an awareness about how violence against women differs based on different socio-political conditions and how contrary to what history shares about the female sex being oppressed, violence does take stronger forms under dictator regimes. Putting such exhibitions in the context of the Trump era would also help feminist activists to have a fresh view about the importance of Latino women issues and the necessity of our support, especially in the current political atmosphere of fear and mistrust.

The Cold War Spaces

The Cold War Spaces exhibition which was on view from November 2017-March2018 at the Wende Museum of the Cold War explores some of the most significant themes that defined European state socialism after the Second World War. As the first exhibition at the museum’s new location in Culver City’s former National Guard Armory, Cold War Spaces provides us with the opportunity to explore the history through rare personal and daily objects, family photos and videos, and established works such as Socialist Realist paintings and sculptures. Thanks to the large collection of more than 100,000 objects and artworks, one witnesses a multifaceted picture of the Cold War, which can be both personal as collective and political. While the exhibition deals with pivotal moments in the Cold War, it also sheds light onto lesser known aspects.

The exhibition starts with “Border Space,” the works related to the notion of The Wall as the most important symbol of division between the two blocks. In this section, the museum’s Chief Curator, Joes Segal, infuses the artistic receptions of the border places with secret border guard training materials from the iconic Checkpoint Charlie. In one of the photographs, one sees the first East German soldier who jumped the newly made fences to escape to East Berlin only a few days after August 13, 1961, the day that construction on The Wall began. Another photograph shows a more recent image of cheerful people and soldiers celebrating the toppling of The Wall in 1989. Also included in this section are facial recognition materials (charts, diagrams, and handwritten notes) of the border guards, which reveal the tools of control deployed by an oppressive political system. The process of scrutiny was not only for people who wanted to cross the border to go to west, but in the opposite direction as well. According to a former border officer who wants his name to remain unmentioned, “Many Westerners regularly went shopping in East Berlin, or had a sweetheart there. People who overstayed their travel visa for East Berlin faced travel restrictions: they couldn’t cross the border with their own ID any longer. So they used other people’s papers.”

The exhibition’s focus on the lesser known aspects of the Cold War is nowhere more obvious than the section called “Secret Space.” As its title suggests, “Secret Space” is dedicated to the veil of secrecy surrounding many policies by the Eastern Block leaders. In addition to interesting surveillance equipment that belonged to the East Germany Secret Police (Stasi), and contemporary photographs of the remnants of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the most noteworthy work in this section is a painting by Stanislav Molodykh. This painting depicts the misuse of psychiatry as a regular tool in Brezhnev’s time for repressing the intellectuals who were opposed to the state’s policies and ideological beliefs. Molodykh depicts a dark and gloomy mental asylum, with a portrait of Christ on the wall representing the building’s former purpose: a church. Alongside the Christ portrait hang two other portraits: one of Lenin and the other of Brezhnev, symbolizing the efforts of socialist leaders to create something as holy as a religion out of Socialism. It also contains some implications for the not-so-innocent use of mental asylums during Brezhnev’s time (the painting was painted in 1982, the year Brezhnev died). Besides the political signifiers, we are also reminded of labels such as “philosophically intoxicated,” used by dominant political powers to condemn their opponents, as we view several men who don’t appear to be mentally sick in the painting. [There are more than two of them]

Our intrigue continues with “Public Space,” just across the most typical signs of public life in the socialist countries such as political leaders’ busts, commemorating flags, and pictures of official public events. There is a photograph of young East German punks in public transport by the same artist who photographed the state official events. The photos obviously surprise Western visitors, who have mostly experienced life in socialist countries through the lens of Western media and as something ideological and totally different from their own. The punk youth photos in “Public Space” are in significant dialogue with the counterculture photographs on view in “Private Space,” which are focused on the more intimate and psychoanalytic aspects of the subjects. In two photos showing a close-up view of the faces of a man and a woman, one can see obvious counter-cultural traits of the subjects. [Silberblick in the titles refers to the counter-cultural portfolio and the social niches and individual free spaces carved out by unofficial artists in the GDR.]

Although the idea of collectivity is a hallmark of Socialist systems, the exhibition presents pictures not only of this ideal, but also includes more individualistic paintings and photographs to represent those lesser-known non-ideological and humanistic aspects of living behind the Iron Curtain. In “Private Space,” the paintings focus on individuals. Four out of five paintings in this section represent women in a non-political, private sphere. A teenage girl from Uzbekistan, a woman reading a book from the Stalinist era, a young girl in Ukrainian folk dress, and a sad Soviet mother holding the letter announcing her son’s death at the front all hang next to the wall of photos of everyday people from the Soviet Union and East Germany. This shapes a significant contrast to the paintings at the other spaces such as “Work Space” and “Utopian Space,” which have more familiar pictures of collectivity and collaboration.

The success of the exhibition, which has been embraced by thousands of visitors, is based on the curatorial team’s great effort to create a groundbreaking, non-cliched picture of the Cold War that is not biased, nor relies on a limited narrative of history. Deep historical research, curatorial creativity, loans from other institutions, and the museum’s huge collection of artworks and artifacts all led to an exhibition which presents a unique picture of the Cold War.

Detached Connections

Communications, in the sense of human interactions, imparts open and hidden aspects of exerting force and control instead of balance, supervision instead of interaction, and misunderstanding instead of understanding. The message is conveyed from the sender to the receiver but meaning is never transmitted. Even in the “most immediate” forms of communication, the signified concept is always deferred, delayed, put off to interpretation. Therefore, in all interactions, the ground will be open for the formation of various interpretations on a linguistic sign, thus understanding the relationship between language and meaning, as a direct and one-to-one relationship, becomes highly challenging.
Sara Abri, in her various art collections and creations, has worked on various aspects of the factors that depict communications from simple transmission of a “message” between the “sender” and “receiver” to the most complicated conceptual grounds. Such grounds as linguistic structures made of letters, voices and pictures were presented in her previous conceptualist installation art and voice collections – such as “Rough Sounds” – and telephone set, as one of the basic symbols of this communication, has been meaningfully used in the majority of her art collections. It is an element adapted from the world around and personalized in the artwork to have a critical approach to and review of the real relationships via artistic expressions.
The expanded dimensions of objects in Abri’s works remind us of the gigantic icons of popular culture in “public art” creations by the pop art artists in urban spaces. In these works, an ordinary object is blown up and exaggerated to the point of defamiliarization from the routine form in a bid to specifically bring to light the forgotten functions and aspects of the object. In this collection, the object of telephone set, as one of the symbolic symbols of communication in modern-day world, is magnified in size to find a symbolic and conceptual function and to impose its presence on the viewer. In an interactive situation a dialog takes place between the viewers and via this object, someone speaks and another one hears, and the status of sender and receiver changes in intervals. In this situation the message is conveyed in its formal aspect without any additions or deletions, and apparently it is sent “exactly as it is”, while as far as meaning is concerned we face multi-layers and “chain of floating signifiers” instead of the signified. It means the exactness of what we hear and what has been told happens in an ocean of floating signifiers despite plurality in meanings and disambiguation. The words are transmitted but the signified meaning is never conveyed.
In continuation of the aforesaid concern on uncertainty of meaning, other collections of works, consider relations in sexualized structures. Pluralistic factors organize the significations of these relationships, but in societies like Iranian society sexual implications and sexuality – womanish sexuality in particular – are effectively taken as main factors in interpretation of the message of the sender. Six works in this collection depict busts in which reproduction organs have been transformed to communication tools – telephone set. These works do not represent an immaculate, neutral and direct situation in formation and conveyance of meaning either. Sexual identity – as a sign of female body on which patriarchic society and culture imprint their whims and wishes – has a more pluralistic and non-signified context than the dominant notion that sees a direct relationship between women’s biology and their identity. In the structure of patriarchic societies, however, gender becomes a key factor in formation of conceptual referrals and significations in communications. When a woman is one party of a dialog, specially with a man as the other party, she is evaluated according to a gender approach and her communicative signs are interpreted according to certain mode. In this collection, this reductive approach leads to down reduction and transformation of the identity of the individual in relation with her sexual identity. Sexual organs are the only organs that speak because they have been transformed into telephone parts. These works, therefore, address the sexualized structure of social relations in a double-sided symbolic way, and at the same time, find a way toward emancipation. The collection has provided tools in a self-sufficient way for communication with oneself. All required tools for a telephone dialog have been placed inside the body organs – resembling a woman. The receiver, sender, speaker and hearer, all and all are placed inside the structure and active and efficient communication is made possible, not through interaction with the world, but through internal dialog of woman with her diversified aspects and self-assertiveness. Each one of these works portrays an aspect of social roles of “women” as beloved, wife, mother, etc. The roles, in the meantime, are defined in connection to her relationship with the males and at the same time, in an autonomous way each work completes its internal relation with its role. Therefore, commemorating women’s autarky of internal and psychological life takes place in six complementary frames.
The uncertainty along with plurality and referral in concepts, either in the realm of general communication between the speaker and listener or in critical approach to the certain role of sexual clichés in reception and interpretation, have been presented in Abri’s works within a greater generality, i.e. a frame, in which the works have been formed. And that frame is nothing other than the artist’s selected style who, putting behind painting, has found cubism and installation art an appropriate media for expression.
The last but not the least point is related to the style of the work and a critical approach to the style. Generally speaking, the conceptual works are kept strong in view of idealistic aspect, and intentionally rigid and rational in terms of senses and sentiments. Therefore, looking at these works has to be different from looking at the non-conceptual works. The hidden ideas in these works are important to some extent, since according to minimalist tradition, artists delegate part of the construction to the others in order to produce an artwork beyond handiwork. The ordinary aesthetics does not constitute the existential necessity of these works and the ultimate goal behind their production is not visual and sensual pleasure. These works are made with more or less conscious content and idea. As objects of thought, they are to make the viewer think about the concepts and subjects around him. The ultimate form comes out of these ideas. The conceptualist work of art tries to instigate the thoughts by setting forth challenges between the familiar existing concepts. This is to help the artwork play a role in the real world, to use and own its elements, to review the power relations and to determine new intellectual frameworks.

The Meeting Point of Identities

Drama, theater and any other type of performance give man a chance to live in “another” form: face masks are worn, dresses are put on the bodies, and makeups are worn to display actors as young or old, wicked and virtuous. The meeting point is where dresses are put off and makeups are washed away. This fluidity of identity is in many cases associated with gender identity in dramatic arts representing itself in wearing dresses and playing the role of the opposite sex. The tradition has always been in practice in traditional Japanese plays (Kabuki). In early years after the appearance of this genre, women used to play for both men and women. The role-playing was vested on the young boys later and then since 1629 men appear in male and female roles. Also in ancient Greece, men used to play the roles of women. Even in some dramas and operas at the age of Renaissance, playing opposite sex’s role was something ordinary.
In her recent series, Shirin Fathi has alluded to various historical and geographical periods to record her dramatic performance as different personalities: from Onnagata – male actors who impersonate women in Japanese kabuki theatre – to the Qajar princes’ painting personalities and the contemporary European works of art. The artists in this collection highlight some historical periods of art in which gender identity – in view of dressing and makeup – have appeared as phenomena not that much assigned. For instance, the portrait paintings belonging to the Qajar period are good examples of vanishing boundaries between male and female gender identities. The faces are extremely similar in the majority of the works: the traditional model of “Maahroo” or round face with continuous and dark eyebrows and red lips like rosebuds. Only the beard and men wearing boots make the distinction between male and female, otherwise the dresses are long with sumptuous adornment. The famous portrait of Fat’halishah by Mehr Ali the painter is a good example.
Talking about these works and to understand them better, it is necessary to point to one of the most important contemporary theories on gender identity. It is for over two decades that Gender Queer Theory – a meeting point between gender studies and post-structuralism – has turned into the dominant theory in gender studies. No distinction between gender identity, i.e. features, manifestations and behaviors we attribute to male and female sexes and their social construction were concepts paid attention in the second wave of feminism. However, in Gender Queer Theory this concept has been expanded to finally a broad meaning that Judith Butler, one of the most influential theoreticians of Gender Queer Theory refers to as “performative nature of gender identity” in her book “The Gender Trouble”. According to her “There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender. Identity is performatively constituted by the very expressions that are said to be its results.” Butler in her famous sentence refers to a sort of identity that is not expression or manifestation of an innate quality, but it is itself the whole story. Therefore, gender identity is not something fixed or assigned, nor a source of act to lead to various behaviors and activities. It is the sort of identity that is made infirmly in the course of time. It is “the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being.” In this sense, body gestures, movements, dresses and various styles create a sort of hallucinatory identity, while there is no pre-destined identity and whatever exists in terms of identity is the actions, behaviors, and appearances. For butler, gender identity is like a dress we select and put on from among various other dresses available at the cupboard. This means, gender identity is something “optional” and transient, just like a dress. This is the same concept employed a few decades ago in the works of such artists as Cindy Sherman through undertaking various roles, or in the works of Yasumasa Morimura, the Japanese appropriation artist, who represented female role-playing in the history of art very well: man as a creature whose right to have a stable position is nothing but a myth. The pluralistic social roles and their cross-meeting with gender, racial, tribal, etc. identities do not happen at a fixed point named “self”, rather it turns into other “self” each time according to the properties of these points. The body has never been the aboding place of something assigned, rather it is a place for the coming and going of these identities. This is something Butler refers to as transient subject. Lack of this fixed and strong position is realizable in the works of art, specially through the medium of photography. Photography is a time-bound medium that provides the chance for recording pluralistic and possible types in a short time, the “self” that is constantly changing into “other” in a bid to symbolically reconstruct and record various available aspects and potentials in “self”, as a multi-layered being. Our contemporary art, though, is still at the beginning of the path to create a complicated world of the same level with this theme, the sort of the world that needs something beyond the represented subject to be visually able to create diversified and intertwined layers.

Unique Approach

It is for ages that observing the world in a system of dual opposites has torn it apart in two pieces. The two torn parts that have caused harm and pain: man/woman, day/night, white/black, … From Plato’s theory of forms or the form of the real world to Descartes and his boundary between the mind and the body, drawing sharp lines between the “opposite poles” leads to ignoring shadows and shades, intermixes and overlaps among apparently opposite issues. Understanding the issue of uncertainty as one of the most fundamental needs for living in the contemporary world of thought gives the chance to see the world in another aspect: understanding the world as a pothering place in which one shall imagine no reality beyond social and linguistic contracts.

In line with this notion, Sara Abbasian’s works carry noticeable aspects of meaning in themselves. Understanding the simultaneous presence of a few apparently opposite phenomena in an incongruous subject, a subject that is not monolithic and unified as it is expected to be expressed by modern manners of distinction, rather, they exist together with several diversified positions. She deconstructs dual opposite of life and death by juxtaposing infants and bones. In addition to semiotic aspect that puts the infant as a metaphor for life and bone as a symbol of death, transmutation of forms or matters reminds us of shocking type physicalism: the similarity between the form of head and the bone can intentionally or unintentionally lead to creation of a broader panorama of mere juxtaposition of two distinct and opposite signs. Apparently the big mass of death is always there in the body of the human infant, the mass that is one day the basis of life and another day the symbol of death: bone.

Transgression of boundaries in the collection of “Man and Animal” follows a similar logic with the distinction that in this collection the artist takes a step forward. There are no more opposite poles and efforts for mixing and compromising the two. Man and animal are not put beside each other. They become one, intermix and transmute to give birth to a new creature. Powerful design of artist bestows life to the new creature and makes it believable. The creature is nowhere in the outside world of symbols and metaphors not even in our imagination and existence, but becomes us, the human beings, in a combination of violence, lust, greed and savagery and any other quality we have traditionally attributed to animals, though we have never been free from those evils. The basic point in critical approach to these works centers round judgment and interpretation of the works as an ethical issue that can be damaging in nature because it leads to creation of a new dual opposite in itself: ethical/unethical, humane/inhumane, … In this realm, humanity is not an ethical issue in contrast with unethical bestiality, but it is a philosophical issue in its approach to the world and to its creatures as “pieces of joint reality”. Discovering similarities and understanding them from this aspect assist compromise and accelerate the process of spectral attitude instead of boundary-setting attitude. In this respect, wider and deeper steps can be also taken. The potentials of these works in giving access to a deeper level of understanding can be where the boundaries between the dead and the living are removed, i.e. understanding the presence of spirit in whatever taken as “object” and lifeless and the way of expressing it in art form that is very difficult but enlightening.

In the new collection of paintings by Abbasian, however, the subjects in her previous collections such as “Bitter Born” and “Defenseless” have grown to old age. The introverted expressionism in her design works of painting collections finds an extraverted quality. The presence of death on these faces is more palpable, where a good technique has been applied again. The skins of faces have deep scars and their coarseness is visible. Paint sprays and spectrum of colors act opposite the ordinary style and impose decay and corruption instead of life and freshness on the faces, as if we see rotting, scum and fungus laden surface. The fresh colors are signs of life but the openings of death turn into deep cracks and swallow them. The paints have been worked on the death-stricken faces like the water of life without reducing something of their decadence and rigor mortis. Bones tell the story of the potential death and the hidden fate of human infant barely buried in the heart of soil and the presence of death in the heart of paint goes counter to the ordinary rites of death rituals, the rites and rituals that are marked with an otherwise aesthetic symbol of black and black clothing.

Much can be said on references and implications of meanings: the scope of these interpretations is not only different from viewer to viewer, but also any single viewer too, can have pluralistic interpretations of whatever before him. The major problem, however, lies in this crystal clear reality that despite the fact that pivotal theme of contemporary art gives the chance for talking a lot about artworks, little works of art can be found to possess powerful potentials for meaningful presentations,  works to guide thought to somewhere beyond the cliché boundaries. Little works of art can be found to avoid speaking instead of using visual elements to “show” the viewer what to see and to exert influence on his senses. One dare say Sara Abbasian’s works stand right somewhere between the technique and aesthetics and thoughtfulness. As such expressionism attracts the senses and acts powerfully in terms of meaning. This is the essential demand of the contemporary art in Iran: putting aside indolence and paying attention to the technique and understanding more complicated and intelligent ways of expression that get into impassable and difficult paths of artistic expression from open and picturesque expressions, just by visual forms and elements than represented subject