CRITICAL REFLECTION
Getting Out
The piece gets activated with a performance that I do. I enter the space wearing a long loose dress with a cloth in my hand. I open the wooden cabinet and from the lower shelf I take the bottom ceramic piece out, wipe it with the cloth and put it on top of the cabinet. This ceramic piece, made with terracotta clay, has drawings of landscapes of my homeland, Iran, inside it. At the bottom of the piece there are drawings of pomegranates and its leaves and branches.
Exhibiting the work “Getting Out” starts with a closed wooden cabinet. This cabinet was entirely designed and made by me specifically for this piece. The cabinet includes six drawers with separators and 180 small unique bowls in them. One of these bowls is broken into two pieces. The cabinet also has two shelves. On the upper shelf there is a thread spool with brown thread, and on the lower shelf there two ceramic pieces. None of these can be seen though, as the cabinet is closed.
In my performance, after placing the big lower piece on the stand, I open a drawer and take out the little bowls one by one, wipe them and put them inside that piece. During this whole process I hum a song in Farsi called Nahang (Whale) by Ebrahim Monsefi. After opening all six drawers and taking out all the 179 bowls, I take the final bowl out which is the only one that is broken. I pull out the small drawer-like table that is located on the side of the wooden box and place the broken bowl on that.
In the final part of the performance, after placing the upper bigger yellow piece in its place, I use the thread that is placed on the upper shelf of the wooden cabinet to close the handles of the two bigger ceramic pieces. The upper piece has drawings of clouds inside it. In the end, I look at them all for a few seconds, let the door of the wooden cabinet a bit open, and leave. In the following days of the exhibition a recording of my humming of the song Nahang would be playing from a speaker that is placed inside the wooden cabinet.
The song Nahang (Whale) is an emotional song about loneliness and not belonging. Ebrahim Monsefi (1945-1997) was a well-known poet, writer and artist from Hormozgan province, Iran. Monsafi has had a full ups and downs life and no doubt this issue has left a deep impression on his poetry. He, who has been working as a teacher for a period of his life, lost this job due to the ups and downs in his life and spent the last decade of his life with many hardships and difficulties. The most brilliant period for creating thoughtful works of Monsafi belongs to his forties, after which he could no longer repeat those brilliant poems. (وب‌سایت ابراهیم منصفی (رامی), n.d.) Nahang is one of them. The song and a translation of it comes in the following:
نهنگ – ابراهیم منصفی
Whale – Ebrahim Monsefi
موا بِرَم تِهنا بَشُم
I should go and become alone
تِهنا فقط وا سایَه خو
Alone, only with my shadow
ساعت تلخ رفتِنِن
It’s the bitter hour of leaving
مه خوب اَفَهمُم غایه خو
I know well when this time arrives
دو روزِ تلخ زندگی
The two bitter days of life
قصه‌ی تلخ مُردِنَه
Are bitter stories of dying
اُمید یَک رو زندگی
The dream of actually living one day
دنبال خو وا گور بُردِنَه
Is what is taken to the grave
ای دل دِگَه گولُم مَزَن
Heart, don’t fool me again
مه بِشتِه گولِت ناخارُم
I will not be fooled by you again
برگشتِن اینین ای سفر
There is no return from this trip
دُمبال خو بِی تو نابَرُم
Therefore I won’t take you with me
آدم پوچی مثل مِه
A null person like me
کجا بریت که جاش بشت؟
Where should they go to fit in?
با چه زبونی گپ بزنت
What language should they speak
تا یکی آشناش بشت؟
To become familiar with someone?
موات از این جا دور بشم
I should get away from here
جایی برم که چوک اره
to go where I am a child
غیر از خیال خوب خوم
Apart from my sweet dream
چیزی نهسته تو سرم
There is nothing else in my head
ای دل دِگَه گولُم مَزَن
Heart, don’t fool me again
مه بِشتِه گولِت ناخارُم
I will not be fooled by you again
برگشتِن اینین ای سفر
There is no return from this trip
دُمبال خو بِی تو نابَرُم
Therefore I won’t take you with me
دُمبال خو بِی تو نابَرُم
Therefore I won’t take you with me
دُمبال خو بِی تو نابَرُم
Therefor I won’t take you with me
دُمبال خو بِی تو نابَرُم
Therefor I won’t take you with me
In what follows, I would like to point out some details and references of the work “Getting Out”. This artwork was made based on my personal experience of getting out of Iran. Since I arrived in UK, I always was doubtful about ever going back to Iran because of all the discriminations that I had experienced there throughout my life. Today when I am writing this text, 60 days have passed from the beginning of the massive protests that have been going on after the murder on Mahsa Amini in the custody of the so-called Morality Police in Iran. During these days I am more hopeful for a positive change in my homeland, and I keep dreaming about being able to go back one day without having to fear for my life.
Two sided containers:
Almost all of the ceramic pieces of this work have one colour on the inside, and a different colour on the outside. This points to the fact that many people are forced to have dual lives in Iran, because of the cruel and inhuman laws that the government pushes on people. For example, women are forced by law to cover their hair and bodies with the compulsory hijab otherwise they can get arrested and imprisoned. There is a concept in Sharia Law that a woman’s hair can only be seen by very few males: her father, brother/s, son/s and husband. During the time I was living in Iran, I covered my hair most of the time that I was out in the public since I was about 13 years old. But since I was a child, we had many family friends and relatives that would come to our house and neither the women in those groups, neither me would cover our hairs in front of those males. We all had one life in public, and another life inside our houses. In our houses we were much freer, even though there was always a fear of Islamic Republic behind even these small freedoms.
This dual, somehow paradoxical approaches also applies to the two bigger ceramic pieces that are yellow on the outside and have drawings on the inside. The drawings were drawn from my memory from the sceneries of my homeland that I had travelled and backpacked in. The lower piece represents the land and sea, and the upper piece represents the sky. I used to love camping and traveling in the south of Iran in the islands and shores next to Persian Gulf. One of the drawings inside this container is of a beach in Qeshm, an island in south of Iran that I had made an etching of it as well in unit two.
Where I belong #2
Etching
The pomegranates drawn at the bottom of the lower piece are symbolic in our culture. Pomegranate is a fruit that is widely grown in parts of Iran that are close to the deserts. This tasty fruit grows in environments with limited amount of water and it still grows and gives fruit. Also, pomegranate has is a cultural metaphor in Iran and has been mentioned in ancient stories of Shahnameh. According to Iranian mythology, from the fall of Siavash's blood on the ground, according to Ferdowsi, "a plant grew out of the blood", which they called Siavashan's plant or "Siavashan's blood". They called Farhad's Pomegranate. It is said in a legend that Farhad hit his head with an axe when he heard the news of Shirin's death. The handle of the axe, which was made of pomegranate wood, fell on the ground and fell on the ground in Farhad's fallen blood. (شمس, 2017) During the protests that are going on Iran more than 300 people have been murdered by Islamic Regime’s forces and at least 50 of them are children. The blood of all these innocent people has coloured the soil of my homeland.
The only piece that is located outside of the yellow container also has two different sides and is the only bowl that is broken. This broken bowl represents me.
The sound:
Singing and music is a common traditional way of processing grief in Iran. Different ethnicities there have their own traditional songs for this purpose and sometimes they sing them in big groups. There are also body movements and dances included in these ceremonies sometimes. Music has been a big part of the current movement happening in Iran. In the following video you can see the on the 40th day of the death of Nika Shakarami, a 17-year-old protestor that was murdered by the forces of Islamic Republic, people are singing a song while mourning for her. In another video a group of students of Damghan University are doing a performance about the mass murders happening in Iran and a mournful song is a part of this performance.
The crowd singing a mournful song on the 40th day of Nika Shakarami's death
A performance at the University of Damghan with a mournful Kurdish song
In the work “Getting Out” the viewer can hear a humming, a mournful song coming out of the piece. While exhibiting this work I realised that many viewers find this sound intriguing and lean closer towards the work to hear the humming better or maybe to understand if the sound is coming out of the wooden cabinet or the ceramic pieces. The experience of hearing a humming from an unknown place for me is similar to having a song stuck in your head and not knowing where or when you had heard it.
I was humming the song Nahang during the performance. I have this memory from my childhood that my mom was singing and humming while she was cooking in the kitchen. I think this singing comes from a place of solitude and being deep into your emotions while doing something routine that doesn’t need that much concentration.
The performance:
The concept of ‘care’ is a big part of my project. The fragile ceramic objects need additional care when handling during the process of making them and also when they are finished. I practice this care in every stage of the project. My performance for the piece ‘Getting Out’ shows another form of taking care of about 200 pieces of the work by keeping them in the wooden cabinet and also wiping and cleaning them during the performance.
I have been working a part-time job during studying my masters and I work in different bars and restaurants through an app that provides hospitality workforce to different places for their busy hours. Each shift I work in a different place and I do different tasks but one of the most common tasks is kitchen porter which means washing the dishes. I was once offered a pair of yellow dishwashing gloves by a manager when I was starting the work at a restaurant. The gloves where big for me, but I still wore them to protect the skin of my hands. I kept those gloves for my future shifts and I still put them in my bag whenever I am going to work, in case I need them.
I have realized that the fact that these yellow gloves are the tool for my work, brings out mixed feelings in me. I am totally aware that I am doing this job to provide for myself and in order to sustain financially during my studies, but I have noticed that I also feel a humiliation when I wear these gloves. There is a hidden shame behind doing a job like this, and doing a physical job with the minimum wage for a living and I have tried to explore these emotions throughout my art practice.
In ‘The Self-portrait with the Yellow Gloves’ I am looking at myself from outside. Observing myself as the position that I am at when I am wearing those dishwashing gloves. By depicting myself in front of the shelves that have ceramic containers on them, I am relating this experience to the experience of caring for my ceramic objects. It is like I am taking caring of myself by doing this job, but also in a metaphorical form in the painting I am taking care of these containers that are metaphors for parts of myself as well.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
References:
وب‌سایت ابراهیم منصفی (رامی). (n.d.). درباره‌ی سایت. [online] Available at: https://rami.ir/ [Accessed 20 Nov. 2022].
www.youtube.com. (n.d.). هم‌خوانی ‘دایه دایه وقت جنگه’ در چهلم نیکا شاکرمی/ لرستان، ۵ آبان. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xmh3kalnK4 [Accessed 21 Nov. 2022].