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It is 20 years of works because we have all the pieces from 1988 to now. And it gives
a taste of all of the aspects for my work that I do, not only my embroidered work, my
embroidered painting pieces. But some of my garden pieces, the RGA, the works with photo
like Venetian, and... it is a woman that I redraw from the magazine. I choose the one
that I find sexy. Again, that's the powerful one. Maybe... the way I draw, I render them
powerful. Anyway, all of this work is for me, to empower
myself more than me to empower the woman. Not here with a message to teach about anybody
else sexuality. Or I had enough already. A lot of problem and difficulties with my own,
you know what I mean? How did we all... people, men, women, Muslim, Jewish, Christian got
into this terrible situation where our body became our enemy. So repressed and so miserable!
By drawing all of my diaries, the more I talk about their conception. Yes, it's about fantasies
and fairy tales and love. And this is my thing. I have been trained in drawing because the
painting school wouldn't teach me to paint. So I had to draw. So since I had no other
choice... and so everything that I do is about drawing. It's not to prepare the canvas.
This is for "The Definition of the Word..." Freedom, love, security and peace and their
definition in Arabic, written and inverted in Arabic, four panel. And I chose to show
them in a non Arabic speaking country. Because I wanted people to just look at the word and
deliberately not understand them. You have no understanding of this word when you see
it and you not understand the language. You just see it as a declaration of importance.
This word, they probably don't love the same way that we do or they don't have security
in the same way that we do. I wanted as well to prove to myself that those
words still exist in our dictionary. And to prove to others that we happen to have as
well those words, which is not associated as well in media with this culture, with the
Arabic culture anymore because of all of the violence... because they put in events of
the violence and not as well the good things. "I Love Paris" is a collaboration between
me and another artist from Iran. Her name is Ladan Shahrokh Naderi. I did this piece
in '91. It is during this period there was a lot of terrorist attacks in France. It was
clear that anything Muslim is scary, terrorist. It's not good to be like this. They have to
look like us. They say, of course, now after September 11th,
you in America have some. We were thinking, 'We don't like that you're either/or. We don't
like them... we don't want to be forced to wear this.' But everyone we don't want to
force the other people to un wear it. Everybody should be free. And everybody should respect
this choice. We thought that we wanted to talk to make
this point. So we did this series of visiting Paris as if we were tourists. And we dressed...
this is the way we had been brought up. And it was very badly received in Paris at the
time. This is the ideal couple. It's kind of this
Ken that you want to go inside as well as trade jackets. I wrote "Barbie Loves Ken."
Barbie loves Ken as a punishment. It's about a ridiculous couple that are a little bit
mad, obsessed. Since 2000, 2001 I had a series that is labeled
"RGA." It's in the title and in the signature. And the R is for Reza Farkondeh. And it acknowledges
all of the painting that Reza Farkondeh has collaborated. He's another artist I met at
school. In '98 he is hit by a very, very severe depression. He is a painter himself and he
stops painting. Then in 2000 or 2001 he started... he decided to paint on my canvas without being
invited. So that it started this very beautiful day. And he started to become better. And
for me it was very magical. It really deviled up my painting. And it's important... I think
that a lot of my artwork comes from life. It's experience, things happen by accidents...