10 - Female Trouble: Melancholia and Allegory in Contemporary Iranian Art

Summary

How can Iranian artists create meaningful art in troubled times? Can allegory be a mode to express the melancholia of a generation's losses, which include those dead individuals who cannot be publicly named and mourned, as well as ideals and aspirations that cannot be publicly spoken? What expressive strategies can be used when the expressions themselves are in question? Judith Butler theorizes melancholia in terms of its productive potential as a voice of conscience opposed to oppressive State power. With Butler's views in mind, this essay will analyze artworks created by three female Iranian artists who exhibited them in Tehran, using allegorical strategies to express the melancholia and anger that ensues from the loss of social and political ideals. The installation of Parastou Forouhar (b. 1962) at the Azad Art Gallery in November 2009, entitled I Surrender, consisted of dozens of white helium balloons imprinted with digital drawings of female figures inflicting torture or being tortured. The exhibition Self Service by Neda Razavipour (b. 1969), also staged at the Azad Gallery in the autumn of 2009, offered visitors opportunities to cut pieces of hand-knotted Persian carpets and take them away in envelopes printed with a phrase from Plato's Republic. The exhibition of Amitis Motevalli (b. 1969) at Aaran Gallery in June 2010 consisted of black velvet banners entitled Here/There, Then/Now, which are symbolic to Shi‘a traditional views of martyrdom and are embroidered with images of the Civil Rights Movement that took place in the United States in the early 1960s.