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DETAILS
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50” x 50”
Coffee stains, saffron, graphite, and acrylic on paper
Artist’s Collection, New York
Cat. na4
In the same manuscript-leaf style, but without the grand allegoric architecture, this painting is referring to current events; namely the post September 11 U.S.-led war on terrorism and the media blitz that accompanies this campaign. Probably provoked by saccharine television reports on the “liberation” of the Afghan woman, compiled by the very same media moguls who did not find horror stories of chopping off fingers for the sin of nail polish worthy of airtime before the U.S. had a vested interest in toppling the Taliban. The Afghan women Ahkami paints, so essentially unimportant and unspecific that they are even depicted transparent or pattern-filled at times, are situated in a barren, toxic-looking landscape, holding balloons that feature exaggerated female features—pornographic clips of physical objects of desire reduced to brutal cartoon—with wash stains serving as their string. On the margins, which acquired great prominence in this work, we see things from the other side’s perspective: stereotypical figures of American women—the cowgirl/stripper on horseback—capture the pious Afghan women with their lasso, bringing them to submission. Rather than a critique of either culture, this painting is in fact a critique of the product sold to us (and to them) daily by our information suppliers; the wheels of propaganda that turn the world around, and crush everything along the way into the flat, binary, easily digestible story that market research shows we want to hear. —NT
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