Heroines. 2011
Acrylics and permanent marker on Star Pin Up - Door Poster, each 158 x 53 cm.
Heroines like the other works: ""Islamic Vogue, Das kleine Schwarze, Miniatures, , Him and Her, Tents and Sacks, Playboy, and Islamic Carding"" reflecting the situation right after the Islamic revolution and the requirement for religious Shiite women to wear the black chador. It turned into the only possible public manifestation of women in Iran. At the same time, a censorship of female imagery in books and magazines in the public libraries and universities within the Country had also begun.
As such pictures of uncovered female heads and parts of the body were either cut out from the printed matter or covered with paint in order to transfer them into the only valid aesthetics. After September 11th, the chador became the metaphor for radical Islamism, and, in addition, the symbol for the question of releasing women in the Middle East from male oppression. In the body of works that I started in 2001, I began - in an ironic and humorous fashion - the act of mimicing censorship within my home Country to “Islamize" the Western fashion world through veiling all the female bodies and faces shown in the German edition of the magazine “Vogue”, on “H and M” fashion posters and on a set of “Playboy” play cards and postcards. Two cultures collide in my work: On the one hand, the series remind us of the fact that many women are exposed to these obligations. Inevitably, at the same time, we think of the “black widows” that we know from the news.
On the other hand, the pictures also scrutinize the often doubtful ideals of beauty within the Western world. Further Islamic Carding (2008) reflects the practice of placing prostitutes cards in phone boxes, which is known as ‘carding’ and is a particularly English phenomenon specific to London and the seaside resorts of Brighton and Hove to serve a flourishing tourist trade. I transport this confrontation also in my installations, sculptures and para-architectures. In my installation “M” (based on five lockers which four of them content the outfit and equipments of my performed different migrant figures and an empty one, and five large mirror framed by lights bubbles) I construct a sculpture of memories of myself and the other, trans-identity, and xenophobia.
"Heroines" appeared at the following exhibition:
2011: Rhizome — AB Gallery, Emmenbrücke, Lucerne, Switzerland
As such pictures of uncovered female heads and parts of the body were either cut out from the printed matter or covered with paint in order to transfer them into the only valid aesthetics. After September 11th, the chador became the metaphor for radical Islamism, and, in addition, the symbol for the question of releasing women in the Middle East from male oppression. In the body of works that I started in 2001, I began - in an ironic and humorous fashion - the act of mimicing censorship within my home Country to “Islamize" the Western fashion world through veiling all the female bodies and faces shown in the German edition of the magazine “Vogue”, on “H and M” fashion posters and on a set of “Playboy” play cards and postcards. Two cultures collide in my work: On the one hand, the series remind us of the fact that many women are exposed to these obligations. Inevitably, at the same time, we think of the “black widows” that we know from the news.
On the other hand, the pictures also scrutinize the often doubtful ideals of beauty within the Western world. Further Islamic Carding (2008) reflects the practice of placing prostitutes cards in phone boxes, which is known as ‘carding’ and is a particularly English phenomenon specific to London and the seaside resorts of Brighton and Hove to serve a flourishing tourist trade. I transport this confrontation also in my installations, sculptures and para-architectures. In my installation “M” (based on five lockers which four of them content the outfit and equipments of my performed different migrant figures and an empty one, and five large mirror framed by lights bubbles) I construct a sculpture of memories of myself and the other, trans-identity, and xenophobia.
"Heroines" appeared at the following exhibition:
2011: Rhizome — AB Gallery, Emmenbrücke, Lucerne, Switzerland