Rocznik Historii Sztuki (41.2016)

TRANS-CULTURAL DIALOGUES IN THE ART OF IRANIAN DIASPORA

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II. Parastou Forouhar. /5*н/теп4е/-, 2007, digital prints on hetium bahoons with black threads,
installation at John Warshaw Galiery. Macalester CoIIege, St. Paul, MN. USA. Courtesy and copyright of Parastou Forouhar

of metaphoric associations, and as Roland Barthes noted, turning it into a simuiacral surface^. They aiso
remind us Warhoi's famous saying: "Because the more you iook at the same exact thing, the more the
meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feei"^. Like Warhol, whose images depict victims in
car crashes, disasters, and racist attacks, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Forouhar is fascinated
by a simiiar concept of mass subject (mass vioience) that is turned into nothing more than omament.
This refiection is filtered as much through Pop Art as through her response to Siegfried Kracauer's
theory on Mass Ornament, in which mechanized gestures of modern societies, synchronized iike rows of
choreographed bodies, become a iifeless abstractiomA
Like Shirin Neshat, Parastou Forouhar is performative and piayfui, but aiso uses humour and irony
in deconstructions of the hegemonic discourse symbolized by the veii. In her photographs .FW&rp (2003)
(Fig. 12) and (2009) (Fig. 13), for instance, she uses chador to provocativeiy challenge Sharia
iaws that circumscribe women's sociai and sexuai behavior in fundamentalist Musiim societies. In her
monumentai composition TT/ć/ay, she aggressiveiy breaks the beautifui abstract spread of the fiorai, siiky
biack fabric of the chador by an eroticaiiy charged hand gesture, which iooks like a protruding vuiva
and announces the unashamed femaie sexuaiity of her Musiim subject. In Islam, Friday is the religiousiy
sanctioned day of private and pubiic prayers. Forouhar uses the symboiic meaning of this title to subvert
reiigious orthodoxy and to show the multiple contradictions hidden behind the monochromatic taçade of
officiaiiy sanctioned norms. The large-scale screeniike composition of the photograph, which iooks iike
a curtain or the partition that traditionaiiy divides men and women into separate spheres of rituaiized
cuiturai practices, further enhances the meaning of Forouhar's sociai and politicai transgressions. In the
equaiiy suggestive A/^/nAg (2004), a woman dressed in a chador is captured in another iiberating gesture-
dramaticaiiy opening up her dress from the front to a handsome T/ A M Westem maie fashion model in
a modern urban window dispiay. However, by doing so, she is not just to openiy manifesting her rebeliion
against Islamic iaws and biatantiy ignoring the meta-narratives of the "controliing Western gaze," as she
stands demonstrativeiy with her back to the viewer, but she is creating a new space of encounter that
imagines potentiai space of coexistence of seemingiy incompatibie cuiturai positions.
Engaging with postmodem strategies of irony, appropriation, and deconstruction, the artwork of both
Shirin Neshat and Parastou Farouhar intersects with postcoioniai discourse. Their works constantiy highiight
structurai oppositions between tradition and modernity, oppression and freedom, fundamentaiism and
secuiarism, and Isiam and the West. However, in doing so, they do not just emphasize the oppositional

23 R. Barthes, "That Old Thing," in Poyt-Pop, ed. P. Taylor, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989, p. 25.
2^ A. Warhol and P. Hackett, POP/Tw. tAe IFbrAo/ '60y, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980, p. 80.
23 S. Kracauer, 77?e A/o.s.s* O/uo/uent. I%///;o/* L.s.sous'. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.