Rocznik Historii Sztuki (41.2016)

TRANS-CULTURAL DIALOGUES IN THE ART OF IRANIAN DIASPORA

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interventions into otherwise ihegible representations to unsettie monoiithic ideologicai and cuiturai perceptions
of contemporary Iranian womenA The textuai inscriptions convey a wide range of otten confhcting feminist
nanatives, ranging from secuiar-iiberai critiques of Iranian patriarchy to the reinforcement of the fundamentaiist
values of the Islamic revolution. Seiected passages from Forugh Farrokhzad, for instance, expiore the intimacy
of femaie sexuaiity and offer a critique of women's oppression. In contrast, quotations from Saffarzadeh, an
avid supporter of Khomeini and Islam but aiso an advocate for women's rights, giorify the revoiution and Isiam
as a path to iiberation of the entire societyA These poetic inscriptions, as numerous schoiars have suggested,
are the key to understanding these images, for they radicaily undercut any totaiizing and essentializing ciaims
about the experience of Musiim women both inside and outside Iran^.
Neshat's Farsi transcriptions rendered in caiiigraphic Arabic script, create yet another duaiity, that between
Iranian and Western audiences. The text is iiiegibie to outsiders building an impenetrabie boundary and
emphasizing the distance between cuitures, tuming the speaking subject into the signifier of othemess.
Instantaneousiy, the decorative syntax of caiiigraphy plays right into Westem Orientaiist expectations that
highiight the pureiy visuai, aesthetic aspects of Isiamic arts, and ignoring the deeper content and cuiturai
specificity of its meaning. Europeans have had a iongstanding fascination with Persian and Isiamic omament,
inciuding various caiiigraphic, botanic, and geometric patterns, that goes back to the medievai and Renaissance
periods, but its popuiarity increased in the nineteenth century with the romanticized coionial visions of the
Musiim worid that Edward Said identified as a larger Orientalist discourseW Orientahsts conceptualized Isiamic
visuai cuiture as a timeiess and pureiy decorative tradition, disconnecting it ffom its historicai and reiigious
contexts. Their aesthetic confiations and wilifui biurring of stylistic, regionai, and chronological differences
of Arab-Persian-Isiamic visuai tradition was preserved throughout the twentieth century and theorized as
rooted in an innateiy Oriental psyche considered to be fundamentaiiy different from the iconographic tradition
of Westem representationai art^. Neshat's juxtapositions of the representationa! images with the perceived
omamenta! fabric of the script enact these Orientaiist discourses, whiie drawing on postmodem deconstructive
strategies such as those empioyed by American conceptuai photographers Loma Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems,
and Barbara Kruger. These artists deployed written texts and images to reveai the deception of unified signs
and to break down metanarrative structures of power. Foiiowing this postmodern trajectory, Neshat expresses
ideas simiiar to those of Jacques Derrida about a rupture or break in the fundamentai structure of Westem
epistemoiogy, when, in semiotic terms, the concept or sign, or "transcendentai signified," the uitimate source
of meaning, cannot be represented or substituted by any adequate signifier. This deconstructive strategy thus
decenters the construction that rests on binary pairs of oppositions, putting aii the eiements into piay and
emphasizing that there is no one fixed or stabie "truth'^o.
Ideas about deceptive surface of the omament and the tension between the seductive beauty of the
pattern and the hidden or emptied-out contents of the image are aiso central themes in the work of another
Iranian-bom and intemationaiiy renowned photographer and graphic artist, Parastou Forouhar. Inspired by
the feminist and postmodern revivai of interest in decoration and Persian omament, Forouhar incorporates
these eiements in her work, which inciudes muitimedia installations, digitai drawings, computer animations,
fiip books, and photographs. Like Neshat, she often combines caliigraphy, miniatures, and other visuai
eiements of Islamic arts with Western references, introducing jarring contrasts and contradictions within
a singe work and inviting ambiguities that fragment the cohesiveness of hegemonic narratives.
Born in Teheran in 1962, Forouhar has iived in Germany since 1991 and became a permanent exiie
there in 1998, following the poiiticai assassination of her parents, Dariush and Paravaneh Forouhar,
prominent Iranian dissidents and pro-democracy activists. The investigations of their deaths, ied by the
lawyer, human rights advocate and 2003 Nobei Peace Prize winner, Shirin Ebadi (who represented Parastou

Press, 2013, p. 201-202. For further discussion of Farrokhzad's and Saffarzadeh's feminisni consult F. Milani. Ie//^ onr/ 77?e
Fwergmg Fb/ce.s o/ /гтжп? Itb/ncn h7/7e/-.s*. London: I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd, 1992, Chapters 6 & 7.
15 Many scholars have written on the importance of these texts. For detailed analysis see N. Cichocki. Veils. Poems, Guns,
and Martyrs: Four Themes of Muslim Women's Experiences in Shirin Neshat's Photographic Work," 77?b*<7ypoce, 4, 1. November 2004.
15 Staci Gem Scheiwiller. op. c/t, p. 207-208.
'7 Many scholars have explored the meaning and significance of these texts. See, for instance, Cichocki, cp. c/?.
is E.W. Said, Or/cnto/Aw, New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
19 G. Necipoglu and A. Payne, 7/A/or/ey o/07*7?<зм?е77/.' Frow G/obo/ /o Zoco/, 3.
2° J. Derrida, 0/ Gro??:woto/ogy (Corrected Edition, trans. G. Chakravorty Spivak), Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1997.