Iranian Contemporary Artist Speaks of exile, Diaspora, and Displacement

Shirin Neshat

Shirin Neshat started her artmaking in 1993, and her first exhibition was a set of photos called Women of Allah which proposed the issues of Neshat’s displacement within Islamic ideology and art. Born in 1957, Iran, she is one of the well-known, American-based contemporary artists of today, who has gone beyond to explore the issues of exile, diaspora, belonging, and displacement. In her series of photos, Neshat present the militant Muslim women that subvert the stereotype and examines the Islamic idea of martyrdom. All photographs are in black and white and in most of her photographs, she is including the Farsi or Arabic text on faces or hands, chador (which is the women cover), and showing gun in few of them.

Few years later, Neshat began working on video and sound installations which result Rapture in 1999, which was influenced by her Fervor. These two works including her earlier work called Turbulent has composed a “trilogy on human identity, inflected by differences in gender and culture, which situates the work at the heart of art world preoccupations today.”

Shirin Neshat, Rapture, 1999, video still. Images courtesy of the artist and Barbara Gladstone Gallery.

Rapture is a twelve minute poetic video in black and white which focuses on the differentiation of gender role both visually and spatially and addresses to the traditional and cultural aspect of patriarchy and fundamentalist society of Iran. After visiting Iran, Neshat started analyzing the differences between the western and eastern cultures and this emphasis has made a great impact on all of her artworks. Neshat’s powerful art is characterized by a visual lyricism and elegant beauty that is always captivating and occasionally confusing.

In today globalized world, artists such as Shirin Neshat play a significant role to represent the differences between the cultures of her homeland and home she currently lives in. As an Iranian, I feel privileged to look at Neshat’s work and compare and contrast my personal experiences through the different worlds. Also the foreign viewers, who never had experienced the Islamic country such as Iran, will definitely enjoy and get a sense of the way Neshat has illustrated her works through her own view.

By Jaleh Fotoohi

Check these two PBS interviews with Charlie Rose:  January 2002 and June 2006

Related Reviews: Global Art Database,Visual Art,Photography,Video

Expanding global linkage in photography

Tim Barber is an American born, Canadian educated, photographer living and working in New York City. In 2005 he created Tinyvices.com, an online gallery aimed at showcasing the work of emerging photographs and artists from around the globe. It functions as an online gallery, community publication, editorial project and archive. Allowing these young artists to showcase their work creates a venue with an engrossing personal perspective despite the fact that it is online.

photo by Sean Dack

Anyone is able to submit images to the site regardless of location, education, or intent. Barber has been quoted to say he “wanted to create a simple, accessible and almost neutral venue to show stuff – my own and others.” Every type of image can be found on this site, from intimate snap shot moments to highly technical landscape photography. This site has even begun publishing books of its contributors as well as organizing several shows around the world. This site is an integral piece of stimulation to artists entering the ever-expanding global linkage of artists working in similar mediums. It allows unprecedented visual material for others to be inspired by and thus create their own work with.

Gordon Nicholas

Related Reviews: Photography, Global Art Database

Liu Bolin: Almost Invisible

The photographs have been entitled “Almost Invisible” as well as “The Invisible Man in China” in various Internet sites, but despite the suggestive titles the meaning behind a series of Liu Bolin’s works of art are far from indiscernible.  The series features men, women, and children painted to blend seamlessly into the background to create the illusion of disappearing.  Bolin’s first piece in the series was in an organized group exhibition called “Demolish! Demolish! Demolish!” when Bolin and his peers found that their local arts centre was to be demolished.  Bolin created a piece that he called “Hidden-Demolition” which featured a person painted to be camouflage seamlessly with the background and photographed.  His intent was to voice the strength of the artists and how despite the demolition of their beloved studio, their, the artists’, spirits would live on. 

Bolin then followed this with a series he called “Urban Camouflage” as a reflection of China’s political and cultural climate.  In the series, Bolin reflects of how individuals have become a part of their backgrounds, a part of the city itself; molded and shaped by their experiences with each other and of the city, as the actors in the site become a part of it, its history and its meaning.  So the actors are seamlessly painted into the background, an intangible connection between country and citizen reflected through the visual impact in the photos.  His intention and social commentary is reflected well in his photographs.  Photos of barely visible people, half-vanishing into their backgrounds, initiate an idea that questions the division between man, government, and environment, as well as a reflection on representation; whether they are about fading individuals or ideals, Bolin successfully captures in his photographs that which cannot be seen. 

Anthony Bornia

Read the article Space, Scene and Actors by Sui Jianguo  

Related Reviews: Photography, Global Art Database

 

Chinatown: diasporic nostalgia

Photos by Monika Koch

Chinatown is a space that combines nostalgia for the ‘old world’ of the homeland, with the ‘new world’ and all its material extensions.  

 

  

 

 

This nostalgia is even more at contrast with China’s position now, as a country rapidly transforming into an industrial/economic superpower. 

 

Related Posts: Photography, Intermedias Gallery

Sebastião Salgado

The photographs of Sebastião Salgado, are some of the rawest accounts of the disparity of human civilization. Compositionally and graphically, Salgado’s photographs are both stunning and beautiful. His use of strong contrast delivers such a raw punch of power to his images. It is impossible for the viewer not to be taken aback by the sheer force of his deep blacks, and pure whites. He is also a master of composing his shots in order to draw the viewer into the heart of the image; there is always something to lead the viewer’s eye.

 

School in refugee camp. Afghanistan, 1996 Photo by Sebastião Salgado

I find it difficult to think that some critics of Salgado find his work too beautiful to successfully provoke society into clearly seeing the message behind his work. Yes, Salgado’s photographs are beautiful.  But it is this initial realization or intrigue which first gets the viewer to look at his pictures. Without the captivity that these photographs exude on the viewer, it is impossible for them to truly reflect on the state of the individual in our massively capitalistic society. I find Salgado’s photography to be both visually and socially captivating. He is a master photographer and humanitarian. It is his accounts of the workingman in our world, which truly bring to light the social situations we are living in today. 

Check here Salgado’s lectures at UC Berkeley

Gordon Nicholas 

Related Reviews: Photography, Global Art Database

Exploring Inside the Frames

Framing plays a large role in the experience an audience will receive. There is a vast range of interpretations of images that are possible, however this is narrowed by the relationship between image and scene. In photos the frame is fixed. Burnett suggests that boundaries are therefore set up for interpretation. The audience imposes meaning on the image by analysing the elements in front of them.  Meaning, therefore, becomes constructed by the viewer. Film, he proposes, in essence, provides the same process. Broken down, films are a collection of images to be examined. These pictures are linked through a common system or theme that runs through them. Film images must unite together to be broken down by an audience searching for significance. The frame becomes a tool bearing no meaning. It is the space between the frames that the audience analyses and constructs cohesion within. Burnett therefore evokes through thought the possibility that space opens a whole new area to explore and consider a possible message being relayed. What role does the audience play in constructing meaning and what role does the representation of images play? How does technology affect this?

Melissa Assalone

Burnett, Ron.  “Is There A Medium for the Message? From Photography to Film,” in Cultures of visions. Indiana: Indiana U. Press, 1995, 75-81.

Self-reflexive intertextuality in Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills

Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Films Stills that were taken between 1977 and 1980 are a series of black and white staged film stills portraying female roles in mainstream cinema and film noir. Featuring a blonde actress’s film career in these stills, Sherman devises a collection of femme fatales, cute girls next door, housewives and other clichés. Using methods such as masquerade and self-reflexivity Sherman tackles patriarchal representations of women via two different, but major conduits: the movies and model photography. The complexity lies behind her use of narrative as well since these film stills are worth over a thousand words in what she is saying about society’s view of the female gender in popular culture. 

Corina Pilay

Photography and the quest to cure Aids

In an age of electronic media and the proliferation of various high tech screens playing a role in our daily lives, it is interesting to look at the relatively old fashioned but still widely used public screen of the bus shelter advertisement. This large scale screen acts to display life-sized or larger than life still photographs which are usually consumer oriented. The bus shelter advertisements I refer to in this magazine are a marketing campaign by Aldo, a fashion and footwear company, which uses photos of celebrities to advertise for a “cure” for AIDS. Taking a biblical approach, the slogan of the campaign is “Hear No Evil,” “See No Evil,” “Speak No Evil,” which is meant to encourage us, the consumer, to show our ability and willingness to hear, see and speak about AIDS by purchasing a necklace for which a portion of the profit will go to an AIDS research charity. While the campaign includes video clips, TV commercials and other media images, I find the photographic representations used to be a more effective use of the screen for a number of reasons. Firstly, the campaign capitalizes on the photographic medium, in contrast to cinematic and electronic mediums, which, “…as it materializes, objectifies, and preserves in its acts of possession… has something to do with loss, pastness and death…” (Sobchack). Secondly, the photographs are in black and white, playing on this concept of nostalgia, as well as evoking ideas of a sterile environment capable of curing. Finally, the size of the photograph presented in the bus shelter forces attention upon itself, and upon the message presented.  The use of the bus shelter screen by Aldo effectively ties the message of the campaign to the materiality of the medium itself.

Claire Sanford