WHATIFTHEWORLD
11.02 - 11.03.2023
When artist Sepideh Mehraban invited me to her walkabout at WHATIFTHEWORLD, I asked myself what I knew about the ongoing women’s protests in Iran. Because my go-to informants when it comes to the Middle Eastern country’s affairs have always been the two brilliant Iranian thinkers in the diaspora, namely Hamid Dabashi and Azar Nafisi, I found an altercation which ensued between them almost two decades ago playing in my head again. Then, Dabashi in his seminal text Brown Skin, White Masks had accused Nafisi – for penning Reading Lolita in Tehran – of being a “native informer” or “comprador intellectual” who marketed herself to the Western world as a voice of dissent from the Muslim world, exploiting her own society for anthropological studies to expose and explain it to the West. As such, after exchanging pleasantries, I put this across to the artist. “Dabashi and Nafisi’s case is a different school of thought. It’s essential to have as many voices as possible. As Iranians living in the diaspora, we need to acknowledge the first-hand story that comes from inside Iran,” Mehraban responded, further highlighting that “people have different perceptions and ideologies, and clashing interpretations are inevitable.” It was a decisive response from someone who has taken a stance. Indeed, with her latest exhibition, the artist rises above such ideological differences to adopt solidarity with the protestors on the ground in Tehran.
Sepideh Mehraban, Revolutionary Regime, 2023. Photo by Hayden Phipps. Courtesy of WHATIFTHEWORLD.
Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death is the title of Mehraban’s show. The artist explains that “the title references the last six months after the death of 22 years old Mahsa Amini in the Islamic Republic police custody. Thousands went to the streets protesting and demanding their human rights while knowing they would be shot to death or arrested and taken to the notorious violent prisons of the regime.” In this body of work, the artist employs different elements and forms to put her message across. In Revolution Keeps Unity, Mehraban uses her trademark worn and tattered Persian carpet as a base onto which she imprints messages written in Farsi. Composed of headlines and excerpts from newsprints appropriated from publications in Iran and, therefore, at the centre of the revolution, the text embodies the voices of the protesters on the ground. The found carpet she uses as a canvas is a cultural artefact traditionally weaved by the nomads, making it an object which carries layers of history. In Advent I, Advent II, Fall Down I, Revolutionary Regime and Unified, the Persian carpet is also used as a base in neatly framed works overwritten with text screen-printed on glue. The glue, which is quite visible, serves a double purpose, that of allowing the artist to add layers of text material and obliterating what lies underneath on the surface of the carpet. The reduction of form is deliberate as seen throughout the show.
Five of the works in the show are done on canvas. They are paintings carrying layers of history, with archival images pulled from the internet. Blurred text of the 1979 Revolution is blended and, at times, juxtaposed with images from the ongoing women’s uprising. “By blurring the Farsi script in my works, through screen printing of newsprints of the 1979 revolution in Iran, I refer to them as traces of history, the palimpsests of a betrayal revolution,” Mehraban explains. The inclusion of the images from the past is her attempt to resurface the bodies of revolutionary protesters who have been obliterated in the past four decades under the Islamic Republic and its fundamentalist goons bent on turning Iran into a theocratic state. Through these images, one can trace lineages of courageous women who stood up for their liberties in 1979 and over the years. In demanding their rights, the women in Iran are not protesting because they look up to the liberties enjoyed by women in the West; rather, they are drawing inspiration from women’s progressive movements within Iran over the years. Mothers, daughters, aunties, sisters, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers stood their ground in the past.
Sepideh Mehraban, Iranian Schoolgirls Take Up Battle Cry as Protests Continue, 2023. Photo by Hayden Phipps. Courtesy of WHATIFTHEWORLD.
Forces Open Fire, Beat Up Women at Metro Station as Anti Hijab Protests Swell; Iranian Women are Cutting off their Hair in Protest After Mahsa Amini’s Death…. These are two titles selected from the five works on canvas. “Titles have always been so important in my works to clarify and reference historical events or homage to the central ideas behind the work,” she elaborates. As someone who cannot read Farsi, I found the titles quite helpful as they hint at what is depicted in the individual works, although they are not direct translations of the faded text in the work. In the two lithographic works, titled Endgame I and Endgame II, placed on the floor, audiences familiar with the artist’s past work would have encountered a surprise element in this show. “Working on stone allowed me to combine my archival images with my drawings. The lithograph stones carry hundreds of years of history and are a powerful object accompanying the prints. Something that is set in stone but deals with a transient subject,” says Mehraban.
As she led the audience who attended the walkabout, Mehraban struggled to contain her emotions. I could tell that the pain was coming from within. As an Iranian in the diaspora, her country is always in her heart. So are her family and friends who have not left the country. Obviously, the people who turned up do care about art and the socio-political matters it engages with. I found this exhibition a helpful reminder of the women’s protests in Iran in this part of the world where noises about the deteriorating local socio-economic and political conditions tend to submerge other narratives. I also witnessed the bravery of an artist choosing not to remain neutral over a very sensitive matter. I saw an artist opting to take a stance against a brutal regime imposing bad laws on its citizens. In Iran, human dignity, which is a non-negotiable, is at stake, against a regime that turns human suffering into entertainment. The best form of support the protesters need is solidarity from voices outside the country. Mehraban’s intervention renders that.
Installation view: Sepideh Mehraban, Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death, 2023. Photo by Hayden Phipps. Courtesy of WHATIFTHEWORLD.
