SHADI
Ghadirian, one of the most important contemporary Iranian
photographer, is to be the guest artist at the B21 Gallery.
Known
for her images of Qajar portraits, colored patterned chadors
juxtaposed with domestic appliances and more recently for
her series ‘Be
Colorful', Ghadirian is responsible for a body of work which
is simultaneously ironic and political. All works are expressing
the difficulties women face in Iran today – torn between
tradition and modernity.
This exhibition
curated by Isabelle van den Eynde presents an exceptional
collection of these three series. The works exhibited have
been shown in important museums worldwide and acquired by
distinguished private collections. Five of her Qajar photos
are currently being shown at the Pompidou Center in the exhibition Les
peintres de la vie moderne.
Shadi Ghadirian was born in 1974 in Tehran.
In 1998, she completed her B.A. in photography at Azad University
in Tehran. She has worked at the first museum of photography
in Tehran, the Akskhaneh Shar, and has created the first Iranian
website dedicated to contemporary photography. Her work has
been exhibited in the Middle East, Europe, the United States,
Canada and Russia including Iranian Contemporary Art at
the Barbican Center, London, 2001; touring exhibitions Veil,
England and Sweden, 2003-4; Harem fantasies and the new
Scheherazades , Spain and France, 2003-2004; Women
in Orient – Women in Occident, Germany, 2003-2004; as
well as the Sharjah biennial, 2003, and the photo biennial
of Moscow, 2004. She lives and works in Tehran.
The series that has earned Ghadirian's reputation
is ‘Qajar', an “historical” recreation of the photographic
compositions and styles of the studio portraits that flourished
back to the era of the Qajar dynasty who ruled Iran
from 1794-1925. She used clothes from the turn of the last
century to dress models, posed them in front of painted backdrops
and employed similar techniques of make-up to those in use
at the time. Into these traditionally posed scenes she has
added modern anomalies, posing them using a vacuum cleaner,
a guitar or bicycle.
In the series ‘Like
Everyday' she takes the chador, as much a symbol
as a garment. She photographs various fabric versions of
the garment without a person wearing them, but where the
eyes would be a piece of household equipment - a spoon,
a pan, a broom, a butcher's knife...
In her more recent series, ‘Be Colorful', Ghadirian
explores limitation and freedom of woman in Iran. “Having the
choice of color is the least right she doesn't” explains Ghadirian.
In this series, she superimposed painted window making a dazzling
array of transparency with luminous portraits of women wearing
bright colored chadors, to elegant and hermetic effect.
Shadi Ghadirian will be attending the opening
of the exhibition and available for interviews on the 14th
and 15 th of January. |
