A new exhibition offers surprising images that puncture clichés of Iran, writes Andrew Dickson.
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She looks directly out at us, her shoulders back. Her gaze is self-possessed, bordering on supercilious; her patterned headscarf is immaculately styled, showing off her bleach-blonde locks to best advantage. The balloon of bright-pink bubble gum floating in front of her mouth contrasts with her stonewashed denim jacket. She appears to be wearing blue contact lenses; her eye make-up is, of course, immaculate. On the bridge of her nose, a dainty little plaster is visible – evidence, presumably, that an expensive cosmetic surgeon is on speed-dial. Whoever this woman is, she is way more streetwise than most of us could ever hope to be.
The are many images of Iranian women on offer in the west, but not often ones quite like this. The international news media reliably prints photos of women swallowed by billowing coal-black chadors, who'd be impossible to tell apart were it not for the thin slivers of their faces. Even filmmakers and contemporary artists tend to serve up images of exoticized females, veiled and gowned and imbued with silent suffering, frequently shot in gritty black-and-white.
All of which makes this photograph, Miss Hybrid 3 by the contemporary Iranian artist Shirin Aliabadi – who died in 2018 aged 45 – so playful and arresting. Taken from a series of the same name made in 2007, which captures the fashion- and nose-job obsessed young women Aliabadi encountered on the streets of north Tehran, it appears in a new exhibition in New York (and featured in a show at the V&A in London earlier this year). Like that image, the show's purpose is to expand the view of Iran many of us have in the west. Perhaps subvert it, too.
As the man behind the New York exhibition, the Iranian collector Mohammed Afkhami, puts it, "so much of what we hear about Iran is about conflict, history, religion, identity – nuclear arms, sanctions, fanatic militants, all of that. It's important to highlight a different side". Though the show, Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians, isn't huge – 27 works by 23 artists – its range is impressively diverse, drawn from Afkhami's collection of around 600 pieces. Some prints and embroideries on display pay tribute to traditional Persian and Islamic art and figurative painting.
There are coolly abstract fiberglass and epoxy sculptures. There are also works touching on political history, including three orange-red neon tulips by the Tehran-based Mahmoud Bakhshi, whose "Industrial Revolution" series ironically repurposes propaganda from the 1979 Iranian revolution.
If we want to understand the range and variety of art being produced by artists in Iran, it's time we looked past the Handsmaid's Tale-style cliches
Others take direct aim at the stereotypes many Iranians endure. Not far from Aliabadi's Miss Hybrid 3, a pastel-hued screenprint from Khosrow Hassanzadeh's 2004 Terrorist series is installed. It's a self-portrait: we see the artist clutching flowers and surrounded by family portraits and heirlooms. If we see this Muslim as a "terrorist", the image seems to say, maybe it's time to look again.