Articles - Mahsa Farhadikia

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.

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

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