Iranian Voices: Recent Acquisitions of Works on Paper

The intense geometric patterns of Parastou Forouhar’s print Red is My Name, Green is My Name – Karree (2008) bring together the layers of cultural history, political activism and lived experience that make “Iranian Voices,” a group exhibition spanning over several decades of Iran’s history, so fascinating. Curated by Venetia Porter of the British Museum’s Islamic and contemporary Middle East department, the works in “Iranian Voices” showcase the museum’s latest acquisitions of works on paper, and are shown alongside the permanent display of Islamic art. This curatorial framework allows for cross-generational linkages to be made, such as the designs of Forouhar’s digital drawings with Persian textiles or the mirroring of the repeated patterns evident in Tarlan Rafiee’s series “30 Years” (2015) with the nearby display of 16th century Iznik ceramic tiles.

The fantastical and phantasmagorical nature of several works seems to reflect the sudden shifts of Iran’s history over the last 50 years. The chronology of dictatorship, revolution, war and counter-revolution is set out in Mitra Tabrizian’s black-and-white photomontage Surveillance (1990). The reference in the work to the British government’s role in the imposition of the Shah creates some discomfort around the institutional framing of the exhibition—the British Museum itself as a state institution has its own part in the narrative of betrayal Tabrizian presents. The powerful central female figure elevated on her plinth presents a positive image perhaps for the artist’s personal resilience and creative autonomy. Lying in the foreground of the composition is a woman shot for wearing Western dress, a shocking reminder of the barriers to this freedom of expression. It is noteworthy and commendable that nearly half the artists presented are women. The background to Tabrizian’s tableaux of recent history is a crowd of people who face us just as an audience faces the stage. The artist suggests the complications of her own position being based in London and standing outside of events taking place in her home country. Surveillance recalls a central moment of Don DeLillo’s novel Mao II (1992) where the character Karen watches scenes of the frenzied mourners at Ayatollah Khomeini’s Tehran funeral play out on a television in New York. The book’s theme of the artist’s role and responsibility when confronted with the terror of mass movements echoes in the exhibition.