Narges Bajoghli on Paramilitary Cultural Producers of the Iran-Iraq War
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- byRustin Zarkar
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Visual Culture
39 posts
Picturing the Other: Race and Afro-Iranians in Documentary Photography
These types of documentary ventures, both filmic and photographic, identify a racialized community as their subject, visibly recognizable by their visual characteristics. Despite this clear reliance on race, there is rarely much attention given to the issue of race itself. Instead, most tend to emphasize successful assimilation predicated on nationalist sentiments and champion the diversity of these communities. By ignoring race and its relationship to photography, we overlook crucial elements that have structured similar stories in the past.
Bailout: Exploring Credit Card Debt and the Iranian-American Immigrant Experience
Set amid the financial collapse of 2009, Bailout follows the story of Shalah or “Shay,” an Iranian-American woman living in Philadelphia, who struggles to hide her own entrapment in the most American of traditions — credit card debt — from her family members who all harbor their own untold secrets.
گرافیتی به سبک ایرانی: آثار قلمدار، هنرمند خیابانی تهران
گروه رسانهی عجم از سال 1392 تاکنون مجموعه مقالههایی دربارهی هنرهای تجسمی ایرانیان داخل و خارج کشور نوشته و نمایشگاههای هنری نیویورک، هنرمندان خیابانی تهران و برنامهی زیباسازی شهرداری مشهد…
Making Graffiti an Iranian Art: The Works of Tehran-based Street Artist Ghalamdar
The work of Tehran-based street artist Ghalamdar exemplifies a new direction in Iranian street art. While the majority of artists operating in Iran are heavily influenced by motifs and techniques popularized outside of Iran, Ghalamdar is inspired by endemic calligraphic styles and miniature paintings that have been the primary targets for 20th century modernist art. In several conversations with AjamMC, the artist discussed how Iranian visual and literary culture influenced his work and how dominant trends in Iranian street art have solidified.
Curtains of Iron or Curtains of Silk? Soviet Artwork in Conversation with West and South Asia
The post-Soviet art of Central Asia and the Caucasus comes out of a Soviet-era conversation of artistic styles that looks not just to Moscow but also to Mecca. An understanding of the high and low registers of this Soviet cultural heritage allows the humor and self-confidence of the work to be appreciated — aesthetically as well as financially — by audiences.
A Mural Erased: Urban Art, Local Politics, and the Contestation of Public Space in Mashhad
Municipal politics around beautification programs reveal the complexity of governance in Iran and shatter illusions about the monolithic nature of the Iranian state. By exploring how local actors express often-contradictory opinions about the nature and future of Iranian cities, a fuller picture of modern life and politics in Iran emerges — one that highlights the diffuse nature of power and local decision-making in the Islamic Republic.
Accelerating Beyond “Iran”? An Interview with Mohammad Salemy on Telecomputation, Digital Production, and Diaspora
While the theoretical problem of the local and global has been long exhausted by the globalization of Iranian cultural capital, the radical treatment of this binary in Mohammad Salemy’s curatorial practice through his engagement with Reza Negarestani’s brand of universal and rationalist philosophy is reenergizing the debate about the complex symmetry of the binary’s components.
Iran Modern? Sure, What About It?: A Conversation about the Curation and Preservation of Memory, Modernity and Nationalism
Curating Iranian art, an indistinguishable discourse from the overall knowledge production about target societies, becomes an occasion to debate the ramifications of global/local binary anew as a form of philosophical concern as an existentially entangled with geopolitical history and aesthetic heritage. Can a diasporic conceptualization of local existence be salvaged through its global pursuit of truth without having to resort to ready-made methodological channels of identity, culture, and history?
Word As Image: Contextualizing “Calligraffiti: 1984-2013” with French-Tunisian Street Artist eL Seed
This synthesis of linguistic signs and visual representation is explored by New York’s Leila Heller Gallery in their new exhibition entitled “Calligraffitti: 1984-2013.” The show features a substantial collection of text-based visual art created by artists such as eL Seed, Parviz Tanavoli, Hassan Massoudy, Hossein Zenderoudi, Shirin Neshat, and many more. The show’s titular portmanteau points to another unification: that between graffiti and calligraphy.