: : : : : : : : NEGAR AHKAMI : : : : : : : :
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DETAILS
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2003
glitter, gravel, and pen on paper
Work created at the Jentel Artist Residency Program, Wyoming
Artist’s Collection, New York Cat. na1
The two large works on paper that open this exhibition mark the culmination of this “truncated metaphors” language in her current oeuvre. Fall and As I sit Here Musing, Fires Will Burn, with their myriad details, saturated vivid color, coffee pigment ornate margins and geometrically-bordered painted center, first read as blown-up Islamic manuscript leaves of the Golden Age. An up-close reading, however, quickly reveals two acutely complex works of art with a common parodic organizing scheme: The Wizard of Oz. Both compositions are arranged around the famous Yellow Brick Road, and feature a swirling abundance of common motifs, such as the veiled phallus wearing a fetishistic, stiletto-heel version of Dorothy’s ruby slippers; “football head” man; a mysterious edifice of a hallucinated Islamic and Disney air; an odd hilly landscape.
One particularly intriguing common motif is the groups of identical female figurines—alluding, of course, to the Munchkins—which Ahkami fondly names “the Farrahs”, referring to their haircut, popular on the streets of eve-of-the-revolution Iran, inspired by then Charlie’s Angels’ star, actress Farrah Fawcett (Farrah was incidentally also the first name of the wife of the soon-to-be-overthrown Shah). One might think of Ahkami as paraphrasing on the imagery coming out of post-revolution Iran, of flocks of features-less black-cloaked women. In this representation she offers us a silly, cartoonish female type, a glimpse inside the robe (or inside the skin?), in an attempt to shake up our decades-long stereotype of the faceless “poor Iranian woman”.
It is a little nuance in this “Farrahs” motif that leads me to a hypothesis about the nature of the difference between these two formally similar works. If I had to date the narrative in each I would place a date of February 1979 on Fall, and a September 11, 2001 on As I sit Here Musing, Fires Will Burn. Fall’s plot unfolds under magenta twilight, as a petrified moon (the friendly ghost of the once powerful Islamic crescent?) opens its mouth to unleash the apocalyptic cloud that engulfs our bizarre edifice, on the roof of which an archaic Iranian dome fondly coexists with the phallic pair that Ahkami would elsewhere clearly formularize as the Twin Towers. At the bottom we notice that our farmhouse—a happy marriage of the oppressive ancienne régime and America’s crushing economic feast—has just landed on the Wicked Witch of the East, to the Farrahs’ dismay. Turning its back to the distant landscape of the Emerald City—the green skyline of New York City at the end of the Yellow Brick Road, with the Twin Towers in tact—and leaving shriveled, bonded “football head” man behind, the veiled figure —clearly the winner of this sudden dramatic shift in power, as it wears the ruby slippers—steps out from the phantasmagoric landscape of Oz into the dreary swamp of monstrous monochromatic creatures in the margins.
Fashioned, after my conjecture, around events dating two decades later, As I Sit Here Musing, Fires Will Burn feature a reinforced version of “football head” man and our Ruby slippers turned less kinky and more fashionable, as bands of Farrahs-turned-Britney (see change in their tanktop design) turn Oz into Sodom with their Cocaine sniffing, Hip-Hop dancing, and bold sexuality (see MTV-Award kiss on the middle left). Our edifice has all but faded, the Yellow Brick Road loops endlessly under the feet of some Britneys (the self?) and Islamic inscriptions and designs on the frame blend beautifully with nearby Western Graffiti-type writing. The MTV generation clearly has a new idea of Oz, but alas, before the rainbow, in far away Kansas, somebody has disturbed their hedonistic wonderland—the Towers now burn. —NT
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