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.
Tag: Iranian Contemporary art
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.