Tehran artists in San Francisco

One day, strolling down the streets of Tehran, I noticed that somethings are near and somethings are far. Big deal, I said to myself. Everybody knows there is a here and a there. But why did this thought feel like a find? Why was I inspired by it as though I had just heard a Hafez verse? For some reason, I felt compelled to give life to the sensation so that it can trot out on its own and share itself with other people?



Fortunately, I am a Hafez of sorts myself. I work in a different medium, photographs that hang in a gallery instead of verses written in a book. The poet inside me said I should grab a camera and take a picture of this…this whatever it is. But an ordinary camera wouldn’t do; it had to be a pinhole camera. Why?



I don’t know if this is what went through the mind of Tehran artist Mehran Mohajer as he created the work that had pinned me in front of it for so long. Just guessing! I moved on, promising to come back to Mohajer later. Attracted by the red paint defacing a set of photographs on another wall, I made my way through the crowd to see what that was all about. Nothing at first. Just pictures of busy Tehran streets, each with a red ribbon painted over it. What was the red paint masking in Mohammad Ghazali’s photo art? Musician Arash Sobhani, had no trouble spotting it. When we ran into each other at the gallery opening, I thought here’s someone who likely connects with Ghazali’s The Red Ribbon. Sobhani’s widely admired social criticism in song leaves little unsaid.



“Damned if we focus on it, and damned if we don’t,” Sobhani reacted in Farsi. He was talking about the large shaheed street-posters that would burden Ghazali’s photos with grief, guilt, anger and deceit if it weren’t for the red paint obscuring them. But forgetting or ignoring what is there, leaves scars as noticeable as the wounds, the artwork seemed to argue. “This is Iran’s paradox,” Sobhani said, voicing the sentence with his signature gentle fury. His hand was clenched as though pressing a chord into a guitar neck. The two artists had understood each other well!



Leaving Sobhani to his new artist friend, I ambled back to revisit Mohajer’s pinhole camera photo. A classic pinhole camera doesn’t have a lens, so there’s nothing to focus. As a result everything, both far and near is in focus (see above photo). If our minds worked like pinhole cameras, Iran would have no paradox of focus. It is all just there! There’s one problem with this device though, things that move show up very blurry. Living things going about their business can’t be imaged properly. So Mohajer’s photos have an empty apocalyptic feeling. Ghosts roam here and there, but there’s no stir of life. The Supreme Leader’s face appears clear enough in the distance, but he stares at us immobile from a poster. Splitting the worlds of near and far with color instead of focus, the outer realm is gray, wintry, and silent, while the inner realm is sunlit and talkative.



Promising again to come back to Mohajer, I was attracted by a double-image black and white video on the opposite wall. The left and right videos seemed identical, and at first I thought this must be one of those contraptions where the image becomes 3D if you stare at it the right way. The game was far subtler, however. Among the crowd entering and leaving a busy Tehran subway station, there was one passenger present in the left video that had been digitally erased in the right one. Finding this person takes patience and a strong will to know. The blurb next to the photo said the absent person represents arrested protesters who have disappeared in the recent uprising. Maybe so, but there was also something personal about Neda Razavipour’s work. Had she recently lost someone close to her? Did her work also reflect the shocking realization that the outside world shrugs obliviously at the emotional hole inside of us when we lose someone dear? Again, a young Iranian artist was contemplating the inner versus the outer. In this case Razavipour had connected the two realms. Her nation too had a part of its heart torn out. On the inside there was emptiness where there used to be love, on the outside the missing chunk was in the shape of freedom.



Working the walls one by one, I found equally relevant, emotional and insightful contemporary art by Saba Alizadeh , Homayoun Askari Sirizi, Abbas Kowsari, and Ghazaleh Hedayaat.. Nima Alizadeh’s works had broken out of the frame and spilled out subtly onto the wall paint. Even on the floor of this small gallery there was a work of art where a traditional medium debated modern design. Turning Green is a laser cut wool carpet by the organizer of the show, Bay Area artist Taraneh Hemami. It is in the shape of Tehran’s street map. To go into more detail would impose too much of this writer’s interpretations. Forget what you have read here and go see the works through your own eyes.



As promised I made one last visit to Mohajer to say goodbye to the show. On the way home I thought it would be nice if there were a pinhole “camera” that worked on Time, bringing the same focus to the future as our minds give to the present. Maybe someone could turn the idea into a piece of writing. Then I wondered if Arash Sobhani was thinking what part of the show he could turn into a piece of music. On the inside art is a feeling, on the outside it is a language.



Here’s where-and-when to see the show:

One Day: A Collective Narrative of Tehran
Wed, Nov 4 - Sat, Jan 23, 2010

Location

Intersection for the Arts
446 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

Gallery hours are Wednesdays - Saturdays, noon-5pm, FREE

Merchant of Chaarmahaal

A Jew lends someone money, the borrower can’t pay it back so the Jew demands a chunk of flesh in payment. This isn’t Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice; it is a story from Iran’s Chaahaarmahaal and Bakhtiaari province. The subtleties of this anti-Semitic characterization are explored reasonably well in Shakespeare’s work, so we’ll move on to the legal adventures of the protagonist: the idiot who borrowed the money.

He was simple man who at an old age resolved to improve his lot in life. The Jew was a neighbor who according to the story had amassed his wealth in “many different ways.” At first he was reluctant to lend money to an old man with no collateral whatsoever. But the old man wouldn’t hear ‘no’ for an answer. Fleshing out this bare bones story, the Jew must have been impressed by the old man’s insistence. Surely if this borrower started a business with the money, his determination and perseverance would help him succeed. So the Jew struck a deal with the old man. For every coin loaned the old man must put up a mesghaal (about 5 grams) of flesh for collateral. Never mind the motive for this macabre contract, for that I recommend renting Al Pacino’s The Merchant of Venice. Meanwhile let’s find out how the old man lost his shirt.

He bought merchandize from one place to sell somewhere else. On the road, highway robbers attacked him and stole his wares. Here’s where our Iranian Jew faced a different predicament than Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s play. The old man’s Venetian counterpart, Antonio, lost his fortune at sea, whereas the Iranian Antonio (we’ll call him Hassanio) could have taken precautions against highway robbers. Did Hassanio hire security guards, or did he risk his neighbor’s money by skimping on preparations? This detail is important in the court battle that is about to ensue.

Needless to say, Hassanio wouldn’t let Shylockpour cut him up, so they set off to see the judge. Part way to the city, they ran into a fellow whose donkey was stuck in the mud. Hassnio wanted to help, but Shylockpour said, “If you feel so sorry for him, you lend a hand. I’m staying out of this.” Was Shylockpour an unhelpful man? Don’t jump to conclusions until you see what happens next.

Hassanio got into mud, grabbed the donkey’s tail and pulled as hard as he could. Now anyone who has ever helped a donkey out of the mud knows you don’t pull the animal by the tail. It’s not a tow cable. The donkey’s tail broke off, and the very upset owner joined the march to the city to demand compensation from Hassanio. Did the donkey owner say, “Good Hassanio, this was but noble intent fouled by misfortune, so thou art off the hook?” Nothing of the sort, and this wariness of human ingratitude may have been why Shylockpour didn’t want to get involved. We’ll knock a few points off him because if he had helped, the donkey may still have had a tail. But Shylockpour gets fewer demerits now that we’re on to his Shakespearean complexity.

With two plaintiffs on his case, Hassanio was so distraught that at the next town he climbed to the top of a minaret and threw himself from it. He didn’t bother to look where he would fall, and soft-landed on top of a beggar who was instantly killed. So the beggar’s son joined the procession of Hassanio’s accusers. Any judge has to consider that Hassanio’s negligence lost another person's gold, his stupidity seriously injured an animal, and his carelessness cost someone his life. By all accounts Hassanio was a menace to the kingdoms of man and beast. Yet somehow we still root for him. Anyone this unlucky must have a powerful horde of demons conspiring against him. To have a happy ending, the story must give Hassanio a break. And so it does, in a way that reveals how the Chaahaarmahaal and Bakhtiaari folks viewed their society.

When they arrived at the judge’s house, Hassanio noticed that His Honor was hobnobbing with the very highway robbers that had stolen his wares. Did the simple and honest Hassanio cry out to the world that the judge is in the pay of thieves? No, instead of helping his fellow citizens rid themselves of a corrupt official, he and the judge went into a whispering huddle and made a deal. So the judge ignored the case we have been meticulously building against Hassanio. The verdict handed down was that Shylockpour could cut off Hassanio’s flesh, but if he removed even a smidgeon over the amount, Hassanio would be allowed to carve him up in retaliation. Filling in again for Shylockpour’s thinking, he knew that scales in such a town are likely to measure a one mesghaal weight as two mesghaals. So he wisely withdrew his claim, perhaps happy to have fought and relieved to have lost.

The judge told the beggar’s son he is welcome to climb a minaret and throw himself at Hassanio’s head if he wished. That was the end of that claim. Finally it came to the guy holding the detached tail of a donkey as exhibit A. Seeing the state of affairs in this town, he too gave up on justice. But he withdrew his claim with a biting remark that is now as quotably famous as any line of Shakespeare's: “Your Honor,” he said, “khareh maa az korregi dom nadaasht.” (My donkey didn't have a tail to begin with).







Note:
Orignial folk tale from the collection Afsaanehaaye chaahaarmahal va Bakhtiaari
Edited byAli Asmand and Hossein Khosravi.
1998 Eel publications
Printed in Shar-e-Kord, Iran