Rocznik Historii Sztuki (41.2016)

Rocznik Historii Sztuki, tom XLI
PAN, 2016

JOANNAINGLOT
MACALESTER COLLEGE, SAINT PAUL (MINNESOTA)

TRANS-CULTURAL DIALOGUES IN THE ART OF IRANIAN DIASPORA:
SHIRIN NESHAT AND PARASTOU FOROUHAR

We are set-stuck, really-somewhere between Scheherazade's famed LUu Люмуяпа' UMJ Оме A/gAty and the bearded terrorist with
his manic wife disguised as a crow. By way of flattery, we are told that we are Persians and that Persia was a great empire.
Otherwise, we are Iranians. The Persians are in Montesquieu's writings, in Delacroix's paintings. and they smoke opium with
Victor Hugo. As for the Iranians. they take Americans hostages, they detonate bombs, and they're pissed at the West. They were
discovered after the 1979 revoiution* *.
Marjane Satrapi

Since the late 1990s, there has been an explosion of exhibitions and publications on contemporary art
from Iran and the Middle East, both in the countries of the region and abroad. This process has been largely
catalyzed by the globalization of the art world: the increasingly intemational art market and auction houses,
art fairs, festivals, and biennales (e.g., the Art Dubai Intemational Fair, the Shatjah Biennial. the Istanbul
Biennial, and the Cairo Biennial) have all done much to spark the excitement about the contemporary art
of this regionf Paradoxically, equally important to this prolilerating interest has been the growing tension
between Islamic and Westem cultures after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the ensuing U.S. - led
"global war on terrorism'T The spread of anti-Islamic sentiment in the United States and across Europe
has revived centuries-old Orientalist and colonialist tropes that include images of despotism, oppression,
backwardness, and the alleged violence of Muslim culture as a whole, generating complex debates amidst
heated political controversies.
Traversing this public discourse are persistent dichotomies of tradition versus modernity, oppression
versus freedom, fundamentalism versus secularism, and East versus West. These polarities are also themes
that run deep in the artistic production of contemporary artists Shirin Neshat and Parastou Forouhar, who in
the past twenty years have emerged as two of the most powerful voices from the Iranian diaspora. Working
from different locations, the United States and Germany, respectively, both artists constantly move across
the boundary between the seemingly disparate practices and values of Islam and the West. Combining and
manipulating Persian, Muslim, and Westem motifs and traditions, they unsettle the hegemonic discourses
of Shiite Islam, Western Orientalism, and neocolonialism, opening up what the postcolonial theorist
Homi Bhabha has identified as a "third space," or a site of ambivalence where cultural meaning resists

M. Satrapi, "How Can One Be Persian?", in L. Azam Zanganeh (ed.), AĄ NVer GMO/Y? !М; Afy Z?7*o?/;g7- GMrm?
IoM?' Lve^. Gncens-orer/ /гоммзл Ил'сел, Boston: Beacon Press, 2006, p. 20.
* For a detaiied study of contemporary art scene in Iran and the Middie East see H. Keshmirshekan. Contew/w'arr /гошол
Trt. Vew Pefspect/vey, London: Saqi Books, 2013, and H. Keshmirshekan (ed.), Сой?е?7?/70?*а?у T?/yLw? tAe A/?&//e Coxt. Regz'ono/
/n?g7*oc?/o7?,s' W7?/? G/o/o/T?*? D?.s'coM7*.s'g,s', London: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2015.
2 J. Winegar, "The Humanity Game: Art, Islam, and the War on Terror," H777/?7*opo/og;co/ (9;707*?c7*/v, Vol. 81, No. 3 (Summer
2008), pp. 651-681.