The Liberal Iranian, egg tempera on panel, 15” x 12”, 2007

Though this practice came easy while she was in Iran, coming back to the US proved diffi cult in this regard. “I didn’t want to pull my Iranian card,” she explains. “I wanted to be honest about it.” It was her delve into self-portraiture that allowed her to embrace this change in her work—she could speak personally, not generally, about cultural divides and stigmas, the cosmopolitan and traditional aspects of her experience, and play with herself the same way she had been playing with other imagery. “When I am drawing, I know that I am drawing myself, but I get carried away sometimes, and maybe fantasize about the way I look to others.” By re-positioning herself into these scenes, repainting them, and playing with their symbolism, she is again staging a “double-life” for these censored works, which mirrors her own.

And the blunts? In her most recent trip to Iran last summer, she collected a stack of currency which depicts the late Muslim cleric and political leader Ayatollah Khomeini. “It’s against the law to cut up money anywhere in the world; it’s super against the law to cut up money with the Ayatollah Khomeini on it.” She intends to roll these into blunts proper and somehow get them to a 2008 exhibition in New York without being arrested.

Though she loves how her combination of imagery tests the limits of cultural comfort, the rebellion against tradition is ultimately not her goal. “First of all, these poses are very old—they’ve already happened. I am doing something that’s already been painted. It’s not necessarily a flip-off to Iran or a flip-off to America.” Instead, it’s a matter of exposure: loosening the threat of imagery, and perhaps subsequently, the threat of cultural difference.

-Analisa Goodin

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Posted to Art Features on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 by kristena.

Tags: Art, Iran, Painting