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Strangers behind the looking glass
The inaugural exhibition at Tehran’s Mohsen art gallery deals with ‘being’ and ‘otherness’
THE DAILY STAR
Thursday, March 18, 2010
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Review
Mehdi Moghimnejad
Special to The Daily Star
TEHRAN: Suppose you meet a friend on a Tehran street and ask, “How are you?” Chances are your friend would simply say, “I’m doing okay” – or, as we’re likely to say in Farsi, “I’m alive.”
This “being alive” is a close approximation of Heidegger’s dasein – a form of “being there,” denoting nothing more than existing in the world, just like all the others who, like you, simply are.
With so many “beings” about, civil relations ensue, which may explain why relationships with others have been discussed by so many intellectuals – from Husserl, Martin Buber, Levinas, Sartre and Lacan to Sohrevardi and Ibn-e-Arabi.
“Being” and the attendant human relations – particularly the relationship between the artist and those they live among, in amity or animosity – were at the center of “The Other,” an 18-artist multi-media show that recently inaugurated Tehran’s Mohsen art gallery.
Curated by 27-year-old artist Ali Ettehad, this exhibition delicately investigated the range of possible encounters and the variety of artistic points of view that the works elicit.
Among the most distinguished works in this selection, Nikoo Tarkhani’s “The Image Through the Mirror” may be the only one that refers the spectator to a specific definition of “the other” in a defined discourse.
Tarkhani contrived a simple design for the piece. Her own portrait has been printed on metalized paper (not unlike gold leaf) and divided into two parts. The subject’s face is covered by multitude of pictures of other people.
In Lacanian discourse the “mirror stage” is the point when the child deliberately experiences its own body and can distinguish the line between “I” and “Other.” This line, however, begins to disappear in Tarkhani’s work. Here, the artist sees herself accepting the other’s gaze. Moreover, she is inseparable from those who have played a role her identity formation.
Tarkhani’s use of self-portraits and family pictures is a theme that also crops up in the work of Samira Eskandarfar, Jinoos Taghizadeh, Farid Jafari Samarghandi, Behrang Samadzadegan and Samira Alikhan Zadeh.
Barbad Golshiri’s “Middle East Impromptu” is a work that has a different point of view regarding “the others.” In this grey-scale video that seems to have been filmed by a closed circuit camera, the artist recites a long, impromptu monologue while his face has been completely covered and walled by a framework reminiscent of a cell.
It is unnecessary to focus on every word of Golshiri’s rant. The meaning of this work is concealed within its basic idea: Intellectuality is delusional, diminished into words. The artist seems at once to suffer and enjoy a lustful sense.
Here, Golshiri sees himself in a merciless battle with the other. This “Other” consists of complicated relations that, for him, exemplify the ideological atmosphere of Middle Eastern art and artists.
The artist tried to justify the ostentatious aspect of his work by saying he was cognizant of it. If we consider Golshiri himself as a part of the art of this region, then we have to admit that even he is not immune from his own sarcastic tone.
Nima Esmailpour’s “Americans Ask: Who Attacked Our Country,” on the other hand, engages with the political meaning of “the other.” The work puts George W. Bush’s famous declaration of September 20, 2001, alongside images of the events of September 11 of that year.
What matters here are the historical roots of the idea that the Orient and the Occident are polar opposites of one another. From the time Hellenic Greeks labeled foreigners as “Barbarians,” as Edward Said famously remarked, Western intellectuals and politicians have considered the Orient as “the other.”
These days, the delusional expression of this view has it that the Orient is a permanent danger and aggressor. This other is responsible for all disorders in this world. Today, the threat of nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea, mingled with that of Islamic extremism, play the same role in Western geopolitical thinking as Eastern Bloc played during the Cold War. Sentiment in the Middle East vis-a-vis the US and Western imperialism simply reverses these roles.
With “Choose Your Background,” Amir Ali Ghasemi takes a decidedly more light-hearted tack. Part of a larger project involving photos documenting a street performance, “Choose Your Background” depicts a Tehran resident asking Berlin residents to choose one of the icons of Tehran as a background for a memorial photo.
In this witty piece, Ghasemi restores sweet memories of innocent transnational contact, while mocking the distance between countries that makes citizens look like tourists in their own homeland.
In “The Last Day in Saint Andrias,” Sohrab Mostafavi Kashani transforms citizens of a virtual city into real people, with whom we are familiar. The essential subject in this work is the complicated world of the videogame Grand Theft Auto, which makes such interactions possible. In these snapshots, Kashani’s aliens look much more realistic than their animated representations.
Hamed Sahihi’s short video “Thunder and Lightning” sees “the other” in an angel’s concealed figure. In “Duino Elegies,” Reiner Maria Rilke believed what impresses us is the appalling presence of angels.
Here, the heavenly creatures wait silently for the sound of thunder or a raindrop to be revealed. These angels must have something to say, a message. That is the etymological route of the word “Mal’lach” in Arabic and Hebrew, and also “Angelos” in Greek.
For the last word, it’s appropriate to point out an artwork whose outstanding quality lies in its nature. The music of Kaveh Kateb is not a soundtrack to accompany the works in this exhibition but a free-standing work of its own. Kateb’s is a work that could accompany the viewer back to the streets of Tehran, back to the simple everyday encounters that constitute our “being alive.”
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
"The other"s opening at Mohsen art gallery
Ehsan Rasoulof: The director of Mohsen Art gallery
The other
curated by Ali Ettehad
at Mohsen art gallery
‘I found comprehension in you only so as to become the subject of my own comprehension.’
Ibn-e-Arabi, Fosoos-ul-Hekam
What creates ‘I’ is something exterior to the ‘I’, something beyond it, an ‘Other’, abstract or concrete. With the creation of the Other, the borders of ‘I’ begin to show. Now it is this ‘I’ who is able to give the Other a sacred, kind, inimical or friendly role.
As the creator of itself, ‘I’ makes Other a means of processing itself. It glorifies, adores, considers it the reason behind its decadence or sympathizes with it. In times, as encountered in mystic concepts of ‘profane I’ or ‘impeccable I’ of the mystic, the subject projects his dear self unto the other to penetrate through his dark self and join him. Such relation between ‘I’ and ‘Other’ is so complicated that one cannot look for its beginning.
Now if we place the Iranian contemporary artist in place of the subject, where will Other be located? What is the foundation upon which the domain of the artist’s ‘I’ is based? Which factors including cultural patterns, collective memory, social lived experience and many other make a part of what she calls ‘I’ today? Is it possible to search for these parts in his artwork? The initial answer to such question is that no matter whether a contemporary artist runs away from himself or whether starts a quest for penetrating into his invisible layers she has to confront the Other. The artist is carving a statue of the Other; even if she builds the opposite of it, the initial example is still effective.
-Ali Ettehad-
Nikoo Tarkhani
The image through the mirror
(Photo-installation)
‘Man should lose his memory little by little. Although this happens gradually, he understands memory is all our life. Life is not life without memory… It is our mind, our memory, our raison d’être, our behaviour and feeling. Without our memory, we are nothing …’—Luis Buñuel, My Last Sigh
‘The image through the mirror’ is not I! It is a collection of memories and of those who have appeared in my life. What the Other sees of my, is different from what I see of myself. He sees me the way I am: beautiful, ugly, tired, angry, sad … But what I see is only a shadow in the mirror lurking behind a pile of memories and feelings invading my mind. Whenever ‘I’ looks in the mirror, it sees a different self; a self so tied with the past that is inseparable from it, one that knows itself in the shadow of its memories.
Behrang Samadzadegan
(digital image printed on T-shirt)
Becoming Other and believing in the superiority of the Other is a characteristics of our age, the age of media and advertising dictations.
Melody Hosseinzadeh
Safety match
(digital image printed on card board)
Tavakkoli Matches Co. annually produces 10 billion matchboxes with 300 workers. Each ordinary Tavakkoli matchbox contains 40 matchsticks. Tavakkoli Matches Co. annually produces 400 billion safety matches. Considering the fact that the company was established in Iran in 1917 at the end of the First World War and has been active for more than 90 years, it has produces thousands of billion safety matchsticks till now.
Tavakkoli Matches Co. can provide each living human being with 60 safety matchsticks per year.
On Wed. 29th July 2009 at 10:37 am Rasekhoon website affiliated with ‘Religious Donations Charity Organization’ reported under the title of ‘We have the Biggest Match Producing Company in the World’ quoting ‘Green Family Magazine’: ‘Today lighters have replaced matches. Large matchstick producing companies each produce certain kind of matches. One produces fantasy matchsticks, the other fireplace matches, etc. But Tavakkoli Matches Co. is the only factory in the world that produces all these products. Mr Tavakkoli says, “Nowadays each matchbox is sold for two dollars while Tavakkoli matches are sold for only 50 cents” and he adds with much pride that, “we are the largest most efficient and influencial producer in the world”.’
On Tavakkoli matchboxes is either a picture of an animal or an advertisement. The animals portrayed on boxes are different in kind and have iconic quality. Tavakkoli matches are a standard of our culture.
On the other side of matchboxes, Tavakkoli Matches Co. congratulates the victory of Islamic revolution on 11th Feb. to the consumers. Since the matches are used throughout the year, it congratulates the victory all yearlong and the consumers think of it when they light the matchsticks.
Matches produced after 1844 are called safety matches, for early matches contained white phosphorus dangerous both to producers and consumers and would afflicted them with phossy jaw or other bone disorders. At that time, the amount of white phosphorus in one box was enough for killing a human being.
Tavakkoli matches have been used throughout Iranian history for firing Reza Shah’s cannons, lighting Molotov cocktails, burning cinema screens, lighting cigarettes of soldiers, drug addicts and those sentenced to death, for setting oneself on fire, for lighting fire in forests, for setting cats on fire, for allowing kids entertain themselves during long afternoons, for lighting alcoholic lamps or setting garbage cans on fire. As such, it is no doubt the symbol of our national identity. Matchsticks are made of pinewood and their so-called sulfur is made of a mixture of 12 chemical elements attached to the stick with animal silicone.
Samira Alikhanzadeh
(digital image printed on canvas board)
It is a long time I am working with old photographs. They are imaginative. They are familiar for all of us. We find our mothers and grandmothers behind time. Mirrors reflect us in their absence and while standing in front of the image, a voyage through time begins.
In this work, life gazes at us in the form of a fire-coloured child waiting for her turn so that a mirror redefines her gaze and being.
Behrooz Raee
Untitled, from Narcissus
(Photo)
Jinoos Taghizadeh
Lost
(3D print)
Perhaps those typesetting newspapers in 70s with hot-metal technology putting small simple uniform ads at the bottom of pages in the empty spaces between paragraphs with ‘Lost’ as their title and with a picture of a man, woman or child never returning home promising a reward for anybody finding them, would have never thought these ads each constituted a narrative of being lost beyond flesh and in a fated time span. The idea of identifying yourself with these faces, that you might one day find your image between the typeset letters worrying you might be lost… Between news devouring your past years like a black-hole growing darker and larger, you know pretty well that you are lost. Now you are the one who orders an ad and the seven-year-old child of those years who thought her greatest obligation was to look in the eyes of those lost and remember their faces so that one day she can find them somewhere is replaced with a woman for whom ‘obligation’ is a vague and incomplete notion that does not leave her. It is because of her obligation that she wakes up in the morning and searches between everyday news what she does not find. What she finds agitates her with such hatred that she recognizes herself no more. It is due to obligation that she goes to street and takes her hatred with her with some fear and whenever returning safely home she cannot but identify herself with those lost. It is because of obligation that she falls into sleep and has nightmares of innumerable faces. No more than those lost, she looks for those faces in the streets that she considers as agents of lostness, faces that she can forgive but cannot forget.
Sohrab Kashani
The Last Day of Saint Andrias
(digital image installation)
People of this city pass each other like those of my city; they sometimes look at each other and might even exchange smiles. They become happy or upset. The people of this city even sin.
I change my clothes. I have packed my luggage. I take my camera and come to street to take my last photos of the city and its people. I enter street. The smell of peddler’s hotdogs makes me faint. It is my last day in Saint Andrias.
Nima Esmailpour
Americans Ask, ‘Who Attacked Our Country?’
(Light-box)
G.W.Bush
My fellow citizens, for the last nine days, the entire world has seen for itself the state of union, and it is strong. Tonight, we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.
All of America was touched on the evening of the tragedy to see Republicans and Democrats joined together on the steps of this Capitol singing "God Bless America." And you did more than sing. You acted, by delivering $40 billion to rebuild our communities and meet the needs of our military. Speaker Hastert, Minority Leader Gephardt, Majority Leader Daschle and Senator Lott, I thank you for your friendship, for your leadership and for your service to our country.
America will never forget the sounds of our national anthem playing at Buckingham Palace, on the streets of Paris and at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.
America has no truer friend than Great Britain. Once again, we are joined together in a great cause. I'm so honored the British prime minister has crossed an ocean to show his unity with America. Thank you for coming, friend.
Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking, "Who attacked our country?"
The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as al-Qaida. Al-Qaida is to terror what the Mafia is to crime. But its goal is not making money. Its goal is remaking the world and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere. The terrorists' directive commands them to kill Christians and Jews, to kill all Americans and make no distinctions among military and civilians, including women and children.
In Afghanistan we see al-Qaida's vision for the world. Afghanistan's people have been brutalized, many are starving and many have fled. Women are not allowed to attend school. You can be jailed for owning a television. Religion can be practiced only as their leaders dictate. A man can be jailed in Afghanistan if his beard is not long enough.
The United States respects the people of Afghanistan--after all, we are currently its largest source of humanitarian aid--but we condemn the Taliban regime. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate.
I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah.
Americans are asking, "Why do they hate us?" They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.
Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes visible on TV and covert operations secret even in success.
And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. Perhaps the NATO charter reflects best the attitude of the world: An attack on one is an attack on all. The civilized world is rallying to America's side. And you know what? We're not going to allow it. Americans are asking, "What is expected of us?" I ask you to live your lives and hug your children.
I ask your continued participation and confidence in the American economy. Terrorists attacked a symbol of American prosperity; they did not touch its source. It is my hope that in the months and years ahead life will return almost to normal. We'll go back to our lives and routines, and that is good.
Thank you.
George W. Bush - September 20, 2001
Babak Kazemi
Souvenir of Friendly Neighbouring Country
(photo)
Production Year: 1947
Weight: 16 grammes
Use: Edible
Use Condition: Gift usable under all conditions.
Ahmad Zolfagharian
Dark Raging Waters of Silent Culture
(Interactive video)
They pass each other without understanding their being-together is all there is: all their bless and agony. To hide what is best in us while exchanging unbearable similarities. Lonely creatures trapped in intertwined networks: dissimilar creatures, simple, easy to understand and incomparable. Raging currents rupture not thousand-years-old islands: they are torn apart by emptiness: nothingness, nothingness, nothingness: thousand years of lack of nothing.
In this inseparable fabric of nothing, in this cruel night of nights, the determined glory of the nothingness of desert reigns in scientific accuracy of carved particles of meaninglessness. In between silent currents of stupidity, castles of silence are erected: winding stupid labyrinths of myths; the might of nonsensical myth. To wander, not in the sense of stepping into perplexity rather of surrendering every relation with the other to the nonsensical culture: to leave every hand waving in the violence of empty vortexes, vortexes of nonsensical culture. To stand on the edge of universal abyss of indigenous culture of solitude and endless autism: to look angerily at the infinite sky above or the ethical principle within.
To scream in vacuum chokes not only the scream but the screamer.
Farid Jafari Samarghandi
Double (From My Family series)
(digital image Printed on wood)
A collection of old personal and family photographs in the form of puzzles. All are photos about which I have heard many stories since my childhood: all memories of the family.
You see puzzles made up of saved memories which you can change, clutter or arrange according to your will; like the memories you remember or a narration you can transport. You cannot deny it but can render it upside down.
Amirali Ghasemi
Choose Your Background
(Documents of a Performance in Public Space, Berlin, Oct 2007)
(Photo-installation)
Amirali Ghasemi uses digital photography in his project, Choose Your Backgournd, parallel to an analogue medium: a painted drape in the background refers to the first days of photography and iterant photographers. For taking his photographs in public space, Ghasemi needed to talk to passersby and persuade them to choose their background from five to six existing options and stand in front of the camera, taking a pose and trying to be playful so as to allow a hasty photo. He showed them the result which, thanks to digital technology, appeared instantly on a small screen. The conversations with the passersby, the actions and reactions of the photographer/performer interacting with the addressees makes for a great part of the his performative work.
In this exhibition, Amirali Ghasemi puts on display an intimate installation of images of Berliners who have chosen Tehran Azadi Square as their background.
Samira Eskandarfar
Men and Carpets
(Photo-based video)
Men of life appear standing or sitting somewhere: a glance, a breath and time. Now they hide.
Katayoon Karami
(photo-Installation)
.jpg)
(photo-Installation)
‘Other’
Gazing
Silently
Covertly
And negatively…
Like the old colourless negative portraits
At the bottom of a distant storage room. Buried between time and oblivion
For our wakeless dreams.
Hamed Sahihi
Thunder and Lightening
(video)
.jpg)
When it rains, sometimes there is a sparkle, a glitter, a ray of light. Angels come and go if you watch carefully.
Barbad Golshiri
Middle East Impromptu
(Video)
Making art, as I’ve always put it, is a habit—a poor one in my case. Making art is not initially creation but constant repetition, salvaged by making puny differences in certain orders on the plane of the feasible. Art is, semiotically speaking, purely negative; it cannot be defined positively. And of course doing it entails not doing something else. Like some of my Iranian colleagues, I’m not doing it these days. We have all seen frames that we can freeze, stick to, and damn. Barring whatever may cross the thresholds of our studios and whatever may enframe and transcend what has been going on in the streets of Iran, perhaps the same thing crossed each of our minds: we have no future.
Certainly we are also established abroad and we can have our own futures beyond these walls, but I’m speaking of those like me who have refused to leave the country and who have decided not to become one more seated in Matisse’s easy chair, chanting “I will rebuild you my country with these tears,” or one more dissolved in the out-of-context souks of the UAE. We have chosen to breathe hatred, tear and pepper gas, instead of hanging onto nostalgia and the myths of exile and of “the innocent artist.” So it’s true to say that in the eclipse of relative political freedom and under the oligarchy and inquisitions of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, we—like millions of Iranian citizens—have planned our to-be by abandoning “labour” and “work” in favour of “action.”
The above text is the opening of an article titled, ‘For They Know What They Know’, by the artist, Barbad Golshiri. The full text can be access at: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/80
Behnam Kamrani
behind Showcase
(digital image on canvas board)
(digital image on canvas board)
‘Behind Showcase’ is a collection of images of dummies in the showcases of Iranian boutiques. In this series, dummies are puppet-like but with a human gesture. They express variety and contrast in clothing. They might represent absolutely chaste women or conversely, women in very humble states. Their theatrical expressions are in times mirrored and other times added to images of the art of the past to initiate new readings.
Kaveh Kateb
Diary
(Music)
1. B s=3
2. Sara's paradise
3. Rostam, Sohrab
4. Solo
5. A Note for You
6. Purdahs of Silence
7. Self-Portraits
'Diary' series is a sonic diary written in sound. Each track, reminds me of certain moments of my life that makes me think of it. I started the series in 2001 and it now consists of more than hundreds of pieces. The collection you hear here is a unprejudiced selection of the Diary series.
The Other; Group Show at Mohsen Art Gallery
- Sunday Jan 3,2010 04:19 PM
- By Parkingallery Team
- In NEWS, What's on!
The other
Group Exhibition
The image through the mirror (digital image) - Nikoo Tarkhani
Samira Eskandarfar, Nima Esmailpour, Nikoo Tarkhani, Jinoos Taghizadeh, Farid Jafari Samarghandi, Melodi Hoseynzadeh, Ahmad Zolfagharian, Behrouz Rae,Behrang Samadzadegan, Hamed Sahihi, Samira Alikhandzadeh, Amirali Ghasemi, Babak Kazemi, Sohrab M. Kashani, Behnam Kamrani, Katayoun Karami, Barbad Golshiri
Music by Kaveh Kateb
A new Art Gallery opens in Tehran
Mohsen Art Gallery is hosting its 1st exhibition with “The Other”, the show is curated by Ali Ettehad Born in Sari, 1983 is one of the artists/writers who is joining the growing numbers of curators contributing to Tehran’s contemporary Art scene.Also Aydin Aghdashloo and Hamid Severi will talk as guest speakers for occasion of the exhibition at the opening.
Mohsen Art Gallery named after Mohsen rasoulov, the late Iranian curator, filmmaker and photographer lost his life in a tragical plane crash at the age of 25.
Ali Ettehad in the exhibition press release writes:
‘I found comprehension in you only so as to become the subject of my own comprehension.’
Ibn-e-Arabi, Fosoos-ul-Hekam
What creates ‘I’ is something exterior to the ‘I’, something beyond it, an ‘Other’, abstract or concrete. With the creation of the Other, the borders of ‘I’ begin to show. Now it is this ‘I’ who is able to give the Other a sacred, kind, inimical or friendly role.
As the creator of itself, ‘I’ makes Other a means of processing itself. It glorifies, adores, considers it the reason behind its decadence or sympathizes with it. In times, as encountered in mystic concepts of ‘profane I’ or ‘impeccable I’ of the mystic, the subject projects his dear self unto the other to penetrate through his dark self and join him. Such relation between ‘I’ and ‘Other’ is so complicated that one cannot look for its beginning.
Now if we place the Iranian contemporary artist in place of the subject, where will Other be located? What is the foundation upon which the domain of the artist’s ‘I’ is based? Which factors including cultural patterns, collective memory, social lived experience and many other make a part of what she calls ‘I’ today? Is it possible to search for these parts in his artwork? The initial answer to such question is that no matter whether a contemporary artist runs away from himself or whether starts a quest for penetrating into his invisible layers she has to confront the Other. The artist is carving a statue of the Other; even if she builds the opposite of it, the initial example is still effective.
Opening : Friday 8 January 2010 from 5 to 9 pm.
The exhibition will be on view till 20th of Jan, 2010.
Mohsen Art Gallery
Address: No. 42, East Mina Blvd, Farzan Street, Naji Street, Zafar, Tehran
Telephone: 22255354
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