Mosafer (The Traveller)
By
Mehran Modarres-Sadeghi
A Thesis Essay Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for The
Degree of
Master of Fine Arts
In
Visual Arts
EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY OF ART + DESIGN
2017
© Mehran Modarres-Sadeghi, 2017
Abstract
This thesis poses questions about the preservation of culture and language amongst generations
of Iranian immigrants living in North America. It investigates the socio-cultural implications of
hybridity as they relate to interethnic exchange and the globalizing process of travel and
translation. Working with notions of “third space” or “the space in-between” (Clifford,1992;
Bhabha, 1994) and Farzad Sharifian’s research on the globalization of English (2012), this work
explores how the use of the hybrid language Persian-English affects an Iranian sense of identity
in a globalized world. Susan Stewart’s discussion on the agency of objects to generate narratives
which are central to a cultural experience (1993) is discussed as it applies to the use of objects in
the artworks being examined in this paper. An analysis of several contemporary
autoethnographic works from recent art history, such as Mona Hatoum’s Measures of Distance
(1988), Zineb Sedira’s Mother Tongue (2002), and Ala Ebtekar’s Elemental (2004), is used to
form a basis for a discussion of hybrid identity and how inherited language can complicate
cultural exchange. The artistic projects that come out of this research are Ma Miaeem va Miravim
(We Come and Go), 2016, and Soghat (Souvenir), 2017. Ma Miaeem va Miravim (We Come and
Go) is an artist book based on the first-grade English book, We Come and Go (1954), which
employs a hybrid translation of Persian-English—in which Persian words are written using the
Roman alphabet. Soghat (Souvenir) is a series of sculptures made from everyday objects and
string, which investigates how culture travels through objects. These artworks are discussed to
explore ways in which meaning can be lost, gained, or altered, through the substitution of
signifiers and the co-mingling of cultures.
2
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to everyone whom I have had the pleasure to work with during this program. I
would first like to thank my supervisor, Henry Tsang, who has taught me a great deal and
provided invaluable guidance. A special note of thanks to Trish Kelly, Babak Golkar, Sadira
Rodrigues, and Kimberly Phillips for their constructive comments. As well, I would like to thank
my professors Gareth Long, M. Simon Levin, Allison Collins, Kathleen Ritter, Aaron Peck,
Bruce Grenville, Mimi Gellman, Jonathan Middleton, Laiwan and Chris Jones. My completion
of this project could not have been accomplished without the support of my fellow graduates
Hannamari, Jennifer, Joni, Karin, and Maria. Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge the
love and support of my family, Saeid, Sepehr and Kasra. My heartfelt thanks.
3
Dedication
To Sepehr & Kasra
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Table of Contents
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………2
Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………………………3
Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………………4
1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………….….6
2. Between Words, Between Cultures…………….……………………………………………....7
2.1 English Influences on Persian…………………………………………………………….14
2.2 Persian-English…………………………………………………………………………...15
3. Objects, Memories, and Narratives …...…………………….……………………….…….….18
3.1 Objects from Home………………………………....……………………………………21
3.2 Drawing with Black String………………………………….………….……….…….…26
4. Epilogue ……………………………………………………………………………………....29
Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………….….31
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1. Introduction
Ethnography is the study and description of customs and social practices common among a
group of individuals. Data gathered on-site through direct observation of and participation within
the group is known as fieldwork. This was a common research practice of cultural
anthropologists during the first half of the twentieth century. In the past few decades
ethnographic research of this type has been critiqued on the grounds that it is not possible for an
outside observer to obtain “pure” knowledge of an othered culture. Alternatively, ethnographic
works created by artist-ethnographers through fieldwork, community-based projects, and
artistically motivated-research offer a first-hand cultural experience liberated from the predefined
interpretations and pedagogy ingrained in the research of early cultural anthropologists. These
recent artist-driven works often aim to decolonize the social, political, and historical implications
of representation while reclaiming cultural identities, histories, and narratives. Both cultural
anthropology and contemporary art address notions of representation, but while cultural
anthropology provides a written description of culture and civilization, contemporary art turns a
cultural experience into an artwork which can create a new space for different interpretations to
be considered.
My artistic projects, Ma Miaeem va Miravim (We Come and Go) and Soghat (Souvenir), are two
autoethnographic works which reflect on my experience of living both in Iran and Canada.
Through these works I have explored notions of hybridity, narrative, language, and their
representation in text. Ma Miaeem va Miravim (We Come and Go) is an artist book based on the
first-grade English book, We Come and Go, from the Dick and Jane series; this work employs a
hybrid translation of Persian-English in which Persian words are written using the Roman
6
alphabet. Soghat (Souvenir) is a series of sculptures made from everyday objects and string
which investigates how culture is contained within and travels through objects. The phrases ‘Ma
Miaeem va Miravim’ and ‘Soghat’ in the titles are, respectively, translations of ‘We Come and
Go’ and ‘Souvenir’ in Persian-English. These works employ techniques of layering and
fragmentation as a means to open a new space, inviting the audience to imagine an Iranian
immigrant’s experience of travelling to another culture. Implicit in these artworks are questions
about the declining preservation of culture and language amongst generations of Iranian
immigrants.
2. Between Words, Between Cultures
In “Travelling Cultures” (1992) James Clifford critiques the practice of anthropology, suggesting
that in order for anthropological culture to represent “global historical encounters, coproductions, dominations, and resistances, then one needs to focus on hybrid, cosmopolitan
experiences as much as on rooted, native ones” (Clifford 101). In Clifford’s view, culture is fluid
rather than static. It is a site for travel—travel as a more neutral and theoretical term which refers
to displacement—a site of intercultural knowledge where travellers from different cultures meet,
and each traveller changes due to its encounter with other cultures. He suggests that while there
is no “ground of equivalence” between travellers from two cultures, there may be “at least a
basis for comparison and translation” (Clifford 107). Clifford’s definition of ethnography has
influenced many scholars, writers, and artists and has brought elements of ethnography into a
much wider range of practices, a field that now includes contemporary art. One of the ways
cultural and artistic practice can investigate the preservation or erosion of cultural identity is by
7
exploring what is lost or disrupted in processes of translation, through migration of signifiers, or
from cultural displacement.
A large part of the immigrant experience is tied to language, with connections to heritage and
history. Giving a generation of Persian-Canadian children a voice, deeply rooted in Persian
culture and a sense of homeland, is an important role of retaining the Persian language. However,
Persian is not an option among the second languages offered by the Vancouver School Board.
Teaching Persian to first-generation children of Canadian immigrants is the responsibility of the
parents. In a post-colonial world, the challenges of learning Persian are deeply connected to a
sense of heritage. Language in this sense is a sort of inheritance, something that is passed down
from the past, a tradition.
According to Farzad Sharifian, a scholar of cultural linguistics, during the 1970s it was
prestigious for many upper middle-class Iranians to send their children to English schools during
the summer break; as well as sending high school graduates to the United States for higher
education (Sharifian 137). The most significant westernization of Iran occurred during the 1960s
and 70s when the former King (the Shah) attempted to realize his vision of what he called the
“tamadone bozorg,” (Great Civilization). It was during this period that English became the most
predominant foreign language. Elite foreign language schools primarily used English textbooks
with western content, further integrating western ideals into the Persian upper classes.
In spite of numerous periods of westernization, and the global and historical tensions introduced
through cultural exchange with western powers, the Persian identity persists and continues to
respect its origins—albeit while still allowing some new integrations of its traditions into some
new hybrid forms. A more recent increase in online interactions amongst the Iranians living in
8
the West in the last few decades has led to the development of a new English-based hybrid
translation, Persian-English. As mentioned above, in this form the traditional Persian language is
written using the Roman alphabet instead of the traditional Persian characters.
Ma Miaeem va Miravim (We Come and Go) is an artwork which focuses on these changes to the
traditional Persian language in written communication. Such deviations to the language have an
impact on both the children of first-generation immigrants—growing up in an anglophone
culture—and on their parents—whose primary language is not English. The illustrated pages of
the artwork draw parallels to the first grade English book, We Come and Go, from the Dick and
Jane series (published in the 1950s) and translates it into Persian-English. The coloured
illustrations from the children’s book are reproduced in black and white with some thematic
changes and translations. The contrasting differences between the artwork and the original
illustrations bring forward the impact of English on Persian by comparing the implications of
these two languages and the devices through which they are taught to children. The historical
tensions on a global, transnational sense of Persian identity throughout the westernization and
globalization of Iran serve to further inform the imagery presented in the artwork.
Published in 1956 in Chicago and intended for first graders, We Come and Go is the second preprimer from the popularized North American Dick and Jane series written by William S. Gray et
al. During the 1950s-1970s, about 85% of American elementary schools used these books as
educational tools in their classrooms; they can be seen as a sort of snapshot reflecting American
9
postwar values and dreams1. Their colourful illustrations depict three children, Dick, Jane, and
Sally from an idealized white middle-class American family. The children are shown to be
beautifully dressed while playing around their American-style house, complete with a white
picket fence. They play with many toys, such as big toy cars, nice bicycles, and beautiful red
wagons; they also have a cute dog, Spot, and a cat, Puff. I was exposed to these books as a child
while learning English in Iran. Only after moving to the North America, did I realize that the
kind of living which was illustrated in the English books such as Dick and Jane series is not the
way most people live here.
(Fig.1) Ma Miaeem va Miravim (We Come and Go), graphite pencil on paper
1
Trip Gabriel, an American journalist in an article published in The New York Times suggests that, the
book’s subtitle is “Learning and Living the American Dream” (Gabriel web).
10
In Ma Miaeem va Miravim (We Come and Go), the children’s names, Dick, Jane, and Sally have
been replaced by Iranian names, Babak, Mina, and Leila, and the colourful homogenized images
of the source book, We Come and Go2 were also translated: Graphite pencil was used obsessively
to draw in several layers of dark lines covering the parts of the pictures depicting the 1950s-60s
white children playing outside—which were not the ways Iranian children played at that time.
For example, some of the toys in the images such as roller-skates, a wagon, and a big toy car
have been covered (Fig 1,2). In other settings, the white picket fence has been replaced with a
high brick wall which is a common element in the design of houses in Iran, and a motorcycle has
been added as it is a common delivery vehicle in Iran instead of the milk van shown in the source
book.
Replacing North American toys and other objects with traditional Iranian objects and motifs is
used as a symbol for preserving Iranian cultural heritage and to represent the fear of the growing
influence of western culture on children and youth. As a result, the dark graphite drawing in the
artist book is in stark contrast to the colourful homogenized American portrayal in the original
book of We Come and Go. The children in the images are reduced to a sign of their whiteness to
reflect on the socio-economic issues of the time suggesting that teaching English through Dick
and Jane series was also about educating young children about white American values and
traditions.
2
http://venezky.stanford.edu/modern/dick-and-jane/
11
(Fig.2) Ma Miaeem va Miravim (We Come and Go), graphite pencil on paper
In this artwork, the meticulous work of covering the pages with the graphite pencil, the repetition
of applying multiple layers, and the labour involved in the translation of the phrases from
English into Persian-English attempt to illustrate a parallel to the difficulty of learning a new
language and adapting to a new culture. Suggesting ways in which meaning can be lost or altered
through the substitution of signifiers.
The technique of applying dark graphite around the absence of the figures is a representation of
the complex act of attempting to assimilate into another culture and to become fluent in it. This
technique coupled with the erasing of western cultural objects aims to highlight the impact that
English (and the spread of western culture) as the dominant language of globalization can have
on other cultures, potentially leading to a kind of cultural colonization.
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In Measures of Distance3 (1988) artist Mona Hatoum translates a letter written by her own
mother to her daughter. The translation can be read as a palimpsest between text and speech
(many second language users speak their mother tongue but cannot read it). The writing of
Hatoum’s mother scrolls across the screen in Arabic, her ‘mother tongue.’ Simultaneously
Hatoum reads aloud a translation of her mother’s words in English to her daughter. Hatoum
explores notions of home and displacement emphasizing the adaptation of textual and linguistic
traditions. A generation of children of immigrants has grown up either not speaking their mother
tongue or being able to communicate through speech rather than written text. How do these
disruptions in language shift our relationship to a sense of homeland, heritage, and cultural
rootedness across generations? What are the emotional impacts of losing one’s mother tongue on
both children and their parents? The fragmented conversation of mixed Arabic and English (also
known as code-switching) highlights the complexity of the relationship between a mother and
her children who speak different languages. Hatoum’s work suggests that she is not only
displaced geographically but also linguistically and therefore psychologically.
This view is also evident in Mother Tongue4 (2002). In this work, artist Zineb Sedira explores the
intergenerational relationship between three women in her family (her mother, her daughter, and
herself) through the use of language. Sedira’s family immigrated first to France and then to
England. Sedira’s mother speaks Arabic, Sedira herself speaks French and her daughter speaks
English. The fragmented layering of this autoethnographic storytelling highlights the slippages
that happen across three generations, two sets of mother-daughters, between Grandmother-
3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMAU2SfkXD0
4
https://vimeo.com/154326390
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Mother-Daughter. This work illustrates the difficulty to create a conversation between these
three generations and its emotional impact on the subjects. While both Measures of Distance and
Mother Tongue also evoke a sense of nostalgia in the audience, Ma Miaeem va Miravim (We
Come and Go) and Soghat (Souvenir) aim to reflect critically on the present influence of English
as a dominant language of globalization on the Persian language and culture without creating
nostalgic feelings. Implied in the use of Persian-English in these works are questions of what
may be lost in the adoption of western signifiers to express a uniquely Persian experience.
2.1 English Influences on Persian
In English in Post-Revolutionary Iran, Maryam Borjian, a scholar of cultural linguistics,
describes how Persian was the lingua franca for a vast region extending from Turkey to Central
Asia and India between the 14th and the early 19th centuries, but as a result of British
colonization it gradually lost its status and was replaced by English. At the beginning of the 19th
century Iran came into contact with the West for the first time, “whose progress, prosperity and
development was a source of fascination and admiration to Iranian intellectuals” (Borjian 41).
According to Borjian, during this time English and other European languages entered Iran,
however, Persian continued to be the national language and European languages remained as
foreign languages of instruction within the country’s education system.
In another article on the influences of English on Persian, “Globalization of English in World
Englishes,” Farzad Sharifian suggests that at the beginning of the twentieth century French was
the dominant European foreign language in Iran. What is notable is that English replaced French
14
during the 1960s when the country experienced a period of significant westernization under the
rule of the Shah, the former king of Iran (Sharifian 137). Many American advisors and technical
experts came to assist the country in its new planning, and as a result, there was a need to teach
Iranians the English language. The Shah’s vision was to update and westernize the country, in
his view English was the language of modernization. During this period, two main foreign
schools for teaching English were opened in Iran: Iran-America Society and Iran-England
Society. Sending children to these schools for higher educational purposes became popular for
many Iranians. They had native English-speaking teachers and used textbooks with western
content. This era can be understood as a period of soft colonialism when the United States aimed
to subtlety spread its international influence—the implications of which are still playing out
today in terms of globalization.
After the 1979 Iranian Revolution the foreign English schools were closed and the new
government made a huge effort to “cleanse English of its western baggage by commissioning
local experts to develop materials in English for school and university curricula” (Sharifian 140).
During the 80s in Iran, many textbooks were newly translated from English to Persian and a new,
purely Persian, vocabulary was introduced to replace even some of the scientific terms.
2.2 Persian-English
Globalization and the increased use of the internet during the last two decades have changed the
way that English language content has shaped the modern Persian experience. Now, many desire
to learn English to be able to use various online communication technologies to communicate
15
with others around the world, both personally and professionally. As a result, there has been a
huge increase in the number of English schools in Iran; in my hometown of Isfahan there is an
English school on almost every street corner. Another aspect of globalization is the huge increase
in the Persian diaspora living in the West. While many Iranians move to English-speaking
countries, the availability of modern online communication tools have provided new means of
interaction. Many Persian speakers living in the West choose to communicate through online
technology using a mix of Persian and English which Sharifian calls “Persian-English,” as
discussed previously, forging traditional Persian characters and using the Roman alphabet to
phonetically represent and express Persian words.
The long-standing discourse surrounding cultural hybridity introduces a “third space” or “the
space in-between” as a site of fluid interactions between immigrants and society in the modern
western nation state. The internal contradictions in the third space, as Homi Bhabha discusses in
The location of Culture (1994) is in direct opposition with how we learn, cultivate and perform
identity. How does one construct the narrative self as a product of an immigrant nation? PersianEnglish is an example of hybridity referring to the space in between the heritage language of
Persian and the language of the new space, English, and the internet.
According to Sharifian, Persian has a complicated socio-cultural basis with “a rich repertoire of
politeness and courtesy … even those Persian speakers who are quite at home in English will
tend to express their appreciations and gratitude more intensely than is the norm in western
varieties of English” (Sharifian 145). In their online communications, they commonly use
Persian-English in order to express gratitude when some Persian words of taarof (gratitude)
seem to be untranslatable. The gaps in translation essentially led to the development of Persian-
16
English. This has angered some traditional Iranians who are quite concerned that on the internet
Persian becomes a language which is only good for leisure time and greetings instead of serious
matters. Moreover, the common use of Persian-English on the internet impacts the spread of
Persian written in its correct, traditional way using the Persian alphabet.
The cultural theorist Edward Said compares the ways ‘home’ is presented in two literary classic
works, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and T.S. Eliot’s East Coker (1940). In his
view, ‘home’ for an immigrant is similar to Gulliver’s sense of homely comfort which he lost
forever, a home which is not redeemable like Eliot’s presentation of home. This view describes
Mosafer’s (the Traveller’s) sensation of having a hyphenated Persian-Canadian identity, of being
between homeland and home. Similarly, the new hybrid translation of Persian-English is the
home presented in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. It is in-between Persian and English, it looks like
English, reads Persian, but does not fully belong to either language.
My current artwork, Soghat(Souvenir), references an old Iranian tradition, Soghat, in which it is
customary to buy gifts for all of one’s family members and friends when travelling. Soghat
means “souvenir as a gift,” it is always a gift for someone else as opposed to the western practice
of buying souvenirs for one’s self. The Isfahan’s 16th century Grand Bazaar in Naghsh-e-Jahan
Square is one of the popular places to visit for tourists and Iranians who live abroad, since it
offers traditional merchandise made by local artisans—some of the objects in this artwork were
purchased at this place. Shopkeepers/artisans in this bazaar often use string to wrap the objects
they sell to prevent them from being damaged. Their use of string and the care taken in wrapping
the traditional objects and handmade artifacts has influenced the creation of Soghat(Souvenir).
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3. Objects, Memories, and Narratives
Soghat (Souvenir) is an autoethnographic work composed of six sculptures made from everyday
objects wrapped in black string. The American literary scholar Susan Stewart states that “objects
have the capacity to generate narratives and serve as traces of lived experiences.” She suggests
that the souvenir speaks to a language of longing and desire; by evoking the process of
remembering, and providing only a trace to enable a connection, the souvenir frustrates the
possessor’s attempts to repeat the same lived experience. In her view, the souvenir always
remains incomplete, partial, and needs to be supplemented by a narrative (Stewart 135-136).
Soghat is different from Susan Stewart’s definition of “souvenir,” the mass-produced objects one
brings back from a vacation. While in Stewart’s writing the souvenir is something collected by a
visitor travelling to another culture, the collection of souvenirs that comprises Soghat (Souvenir)
represent cultural memories from my homeland, Iran. Instead of serving as tourist objects, to
remember experiences, Soghat (Souvenir) is representative of both my lived experience growing
up Persian in Iran and the transitional experience of returning to my homeland as an Iranian
immigrant to Canada.
Each work in the series presents an everyday object imbued with subtle significance, each has its
own title which includes the name of the object in Persian-English as well as its English
translation: Sini (Tray), Kaashi (Tile), Sher (Poetry), Oot’to (Iron), Kafsh (Shoes), and
Skateboard (Skateboard). Together they make up a collection of objects that represent the care
and protection taken when the objects are seen as tokens of phenomenological or collective
18
memory; objects which the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty states contain a, “personal life,
expression, knowledge and history.” 5
Some of the objects which make a good soghat from Vancouver are everyday household objects
such as electronic products (computers, phones …), western branded clothing (Adidas and Gap),
and children’s toys (Barbie and Lego), which are not easy to find in Isfahan. Similarly, Isfahan
handcrafted artifacts and books of Iranian poetry are among popular traditional objects to bring
to Vancouver. Thus, a souvenir for an Iranian immigrant depending on the route of transit is a
functional object (Canada to Iran) or an object to preserve a cultural connection (Iran to Canada).
According to Stewart the souvenir has a double function: it authenticates a remote past
experience and, at the same time, discredits the present. In her view, the present is either “too
impersonal, too looming or too alienating compared to the intimate and direct experience of
contact which the souvenir has as its referent” (Stewart 139). For many immigrant families, it is
common to decorate their homes with traditional objects from their hometown to keep the
memories alive and to make them feel at home. For instance, the copper tray hung on the wall at
one’s home can bring the memories of the Isfahan Bazaar, conjuring memories of people talking
and local artisans hammering.
In Elemental (2004)6 artist Ala Ebtekar explores cultural displacement and its impact for both the
Iranian immigrants and their children growing up in western culture. Ebtekar, an Americanbased artist and a second-generation Iranian immigrant, turns the gallery space into an Iranian
5
Quoted by Nestor Garcia Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, Minneapolis,
University of Minnesota Press, 1995.
6
http://bidoun.org/articles/ala-ebtekar-elemental
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traditional coffee-house interior with its traditional furnishings and objects, including wooden
benches covered with rugs, hookahs, and Persian teacups. By painting the domestic objects in the
coffee-house white, Ebtekar draws attention to the decorative features of his installation, printed
Persian floral motifs, ornaments and signs taken from Persian miniatures paired with Adidas
branded sneakers and tracksuits. His work aims to highlight what is not visible, what is absent—
namely the interactions, the exchange of cultural roots, music, poetry, stories and paintings that
typically make up traditional Iranian coffee house culture.
While the objects in Elemental were displayed in a domestic Persian space, painted white, they
almost became part of the background. Almost the inverse of Ebtekar’s presentation, the objects
in Soghat (Souvenir), wrapped in black string, stand out in the space becoming highlighted in the
gallery as dark objects standing out against the white background. By mixing traditional Persian
miniature painting with street-style design culture, Ebtekar is suggesting that we may benefit by
drawing across cultures, experiences, and generations in order to make them uniquely our own—
similar to Clifford’s discussion of cultural hybridity mentioned above. A new generation will not
experience being Persian in the same way their parents did, but they can still honour and respect
those traditions and cultural memories while integrating Persian identity into their contemporary
transcultural experience.
The use of black string in the Soghat (Souvenir) series is employed to hide, protect, and preserve
the precious cultural signifiers for the Persian diaspora. It aims to highlight the changes in
cultural traditions and the influence of English and western culture by presenting both traditional
and contemporary objects together. By placing the objects on plinths, this work borrows from the
vocabulary of ethnographic display of cultural artifacts, but by obscuring, protecting, and
20
wrapping the objects, it places them in the context of art objects. This work aims to convey a
reclaiming of Persian cultural identity while decolonizing it from ethnographic strategies of
representation.
The cultural theorist Homi Bhabha critiques the western representation of other cultures as
homogeneous, holistic, historically continuous and uninterrupted (Bhabha 200). In his view,
historians and ethnographers traditionally presumed to have the narrative authority to produce
pedagogical knowledge of another culture. At odds with the ethnographer’s construction, the
notion of performative identity refers to the agency of the hybrid figure who offers a different
cultural discourse which disrupts the signification of “the people” as a singular, homogeneous
group of people. In Bhabha’s view, the narrative aspect of performative identity interferes with
the authoritative pedagogy by “casting a shadow between the people as ‘image’ and its
signification as differentiating sign of Self, distinct from the Other and of the Outside” (Bhabha
212). The use of the colour black in both the Soghat (Souvenir) series and Ma Miaeem va
Miravim (We Come and Go) attempts to represent the impact that English (and the spread of
western culture) as a dominant language of globalization can have on other cultures, figuratively
“blacking out” meaning and obscuring forms.
3.1 Objects from Home
Soghat (Souvenir) consists of six sculptures: three traditional Iranian objects—a copper tray, a
few blue tiles, and a book of Persian poetry; and three from western culture—a skateboard, a pair
of high-heeled shoes, and an iron. The process of wrapping these objects in string has completely
21
changed the relationship between the objects and their cultural context (their audience). In
Iranian culture, all six of these objects are part of the normal experience of culture that include
both traditional Iranian and contemporary western objects. They are all in use in Iranian culture,
however they may have different users. In Canadian culture the three traditional objects lose
their function (beyond that of cultural souvenirs.)
String turns the objects into a time capsule, freezing the objects and their narratives about the
present time, the socio-cultural implications of hybridity, the rise of English in Iran and the
desire to learn about western culture amongst Iranians. The meticulous work of wrapping the
objects in string in Soghat (Souvenir) aims to protect and preserve the objects, their fragile
histories, cultural knowledge and the personal life that they represent. This is in opposition to the
labour of love performed by Shopkeepers (mostly men) in the Isfahan bazaar—they wrapped the
objects in string to protect them from damage. By displaying the traditional objects and the
contemporary objects together in the gallery in the Canadian context, this work attempts to
challenge the way the audience reads cultural meanings into these objects while drawing
attention to the changes in cultural traditions.
Description of the objects in Soghat (Souvenir): In Sini (Tray) (Fig. 3) the copper tray was
purchased at the Isfahan Grand Bazaar from a local artisan. This type of tray is in common use in
Iranian homes as well as restaurants offering traditional Iranian food; The blue tiles in Kaashi
(Tile) (Fig. 4) are also hand-crafted by local artisans in the same bazaar and are similar to the
ones used in the structures of the historical places in Isfahan. Their symmetrical designs have
influenced many contemporary Iranian artists living in the West; The book of poetry in Sher
(Poetry) (Fig.5) is called Divan-e-Hafez and is written by one of the most popular Iranian poets
22
of the Medieval Ages, Hafez. This book has been translated into English many times—however,
its translations are very different from the original work; The skateboard in Skateboard
(Skateboard) (Fig.6) represents youth culture, their acts of freedom and independence. It
references the influence of western youth culture on Iranian youth. In Iran, this sport is also
popular among girls which is different from north America; The high-heeled shoes in Kafsh
(Shoes) (Fig.7) is a symbol for the spread of western cultural norms for dressing up across the
world. Iranians traditionally dress up more formally as compared to north Americans—
particularly west coast casual lifestyle; The iron in Oot’to (Iron) (Fig.8) is a symbol for the
influence of western style clothing. As mentioned above, Iranians traditionally wear more formal
clothing, such as men’s suits and women’s dresses, as compared to north Americans. All six of
these objects represent mobility and migration, and how culture changes as a result.
(Fig. 3) Sini (Tray), from the series Soghat (Souvenir), tray and string, 2017
23
(Fig. 4) Kaashi (Tile), from the series Soghat (Souvenir), tile and string, 2017
(Fig.5) Sher (Poetry), from the series Soghat (Souvenir), book and string, 2017
24
(Fig.6) Skateboard (Skateboard) detail, from the series Soghat (Souvenir), skateboard and string, 2017
(Fig.7) Kafsh (Shoes), from the series Soghat (Souvenir), shoes and string, 2017
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(Fig.8) Oot’to (Iron), from the series Soghat (Souvenir), iron and string, 2017
3.2 Drawing with Black String
In Soghat (Souvenir), the process of wrapping and knotting string around the objects creates
three-dimensional drawings. Similar to the way an artist uses graphite pencil to draw a line by
connecting two points, the string has been used to connect two knots. The colour black also
refers to drawing materials, such as graphite pencils, pen and ink, and charcoal.
In recent years, basic drawing materials such as a graphite pencil, used to an extreme to create
large abstract drawing was the focus of my work. In these types of works, a certain line or
pattern is drawn freehand repeatedly to create a unified drawing without any focal point (Fig.9).
This kind of drawing creates a sophisticated visual pattern which aims to pull the viewer’s
imagination into a different world by getting lost in the details of the drawing’s fine lines. I have
used similar technique of intense repetition in the spontaneous act of wrapping the objects in
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string in Soghat (Souvenir) (Fig.10). The viewer is drawn to observe the tradition suggested by
the collected objects and the cultural knowledge which their concealed forms can still
communicate.
(Fig. 9) Lost details, pen and ink on paper, 40” X 40”, 2013
(Fig. 10) Sini (Tray) details, from the series Soghat (Souvenir), tray and string, 2017
The use of string also nods to craft techniques such as crochet, knitting, and embroidery, which
are traditionally seen as women’s work. In Iran, girls are introduced to some of these techniques
27
in high school (girls’ schools). My mother also taught me a little embroidery and knitting at
young age. In fact, the same crochet hook was used in wrapping the objects that my mother gave
me when we moved to Canada. However, the use of the string in Soghat (Souvenir) is very
different from making crochet. The process of wrapping was accidental and did not follow any
conventional weaving techniques or any specific stitch patterns. One has to become deeply
involved in that process and that mood which takes days or weeks to complete, and by the end, it
is impossible to remember where the wrapping started and where it ended. In Soghat (Souvenir),
string is not a typical domestic material to make a blanket, instead its soft flexible quality helps
to make the hard objects transcendent.
The use of the black string in Soghat (Souvenir) recalls the visual language of abstraction in the
contemporary artworks of Chiharu Shiota, a Japanese artist based in Berlin. Shiota uses the
material to weave a large network of string around everyday objects, such as chairs, keys, and
clothes. She uses string to represent the stories of the objects and traces of people’s life through
abstract drawing of lines and knots in space. In her work In Silence (2008)7 several chairs and a
piano are caught within a massive web of black string. The piano loses its voice and no one can
use the chairs, as a result, the room becomes silent. Objects have their own life and their own
history, string freezes the objects to preserve their precious stories. While the everyday objects in
Shiota’s work are a symbol of memory and nostalgia and do not belong to any specific time or
any particular culture, the objects in Soghat (Souvenir) relate to the present time when many
Iranians leave their homeland and immigrate to another country—bringing with them the objects
7
http://www.chiharu-shiota.com/en/works/?y=2008
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that help making their new place feel like home, that help them hold on to a sense of place they
have left.
The objects in Soghat (Souvenir) are gifts from home wrapped in excessive quantities of string;
they can be seen to represent one’s fear of losing something very precious, a culture, a tradition;
while at the same time the string frustrates the viewer’s ability to fully engage with the objects
themselves; they offer a representation of cultural protecting, respect and preservation. The
tension presented through the complex weave is at odds with the pressure to use the objects and
to perform our expected relationship with them, but like a palimpsest one can only catch a
glimpse of its inner layers, an interior body of knowledge that is rooted in personal life and
expression.
4. Epilogue
Today, people move around the world more than ever before. They bring with them their
traditions, values, and histories; arguably, their cultures change as a result of mixing with those
of their new homes. My works, Ma Miaeem va Miravim (We Come and Go) and Soghat
(Souvenir), aim to create a conversation about the importance of preserving Persian cultural
heritage amongst future generations of Iranian immigrants while also drawing attention to the
role of English as a dominant language of globalization and its impacts on other cultures. When
an Iranian family immigrates to a western country, preserving their cultural heritage, and in
particular the mother tongue, can be challenging and yet very significant. Through wrapping
precious traditional objects in string, Soghat (Souvenir), transforms an Iranian immigrant’s
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experience and memories of travelling to another culture into timeless cultural artifacts, objects
of art which speak to a collective Persian experience. When presented in a gallery, the traditional
objects resist the simple categorization of their stories by cultural anthropologists. Culture is not
a set of artifacts or objects but is the way that the members of a particular group use them as
tools of cultural remembrance.
While addressing issues of cultural preservation, my work also endeavours to raise questions of
identity through focusing on the impact of the hybrid translation of Persian-English on the
preservation of the Persian language and culture among Iranians in diaspora. These works aim to
challenge the audience to see Iranian culture and its changes from a different perspective while
providing a unique opportunity for discussion generating questions and open our minds to
different perspectives.
30
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