Centralizing Margins and Marginalizing Centers Diasporas and Contemporary Iranian Art Anthony Downey On March 20, 2009, on the occasion of its New Year celebrations, President Barack Obama recorded and broadcast, complete with Farsi sub-titles, a message to the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Although not without a degree of cajoling, in style and context Obama’s speech was notably different to those of his predecessors. Choosing a corner of the White House in which the American flag was conspicuous in its absence, he began by citing Iran’s “celebrated culture” before going on to observe that “over many centuries your art, your music, literature and innovation have made the world a better and more beautiful place.” In a broader geopolitical sense, the speech also appealed to the Diasporic context of Iranian culture and its impact upon other cultures. “Here in the United States”, Obama continued, “our own communities have been enhanced by the contributions of Iranian Americans. We know that you are a great civilization, and your accomplishments have earned the respect of the United States and the world.” In the often non-existent climate of United States/ Iranian diplomacy, even Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, whose views have been long associated with conservatism, was moved to note that “our [Iran’s] behavior will change” if the United States held true to its stated aim of treating Iran with mutual respect. And mutuality of purpose would appear to underwrite, on the face of it at least, the significant sense in which cultural exchanges are being developed between both countries and, more generally, between Iranian culture and the West. In the form of exchange of ideas and the development of dialogue, culture has long been a point of reference between the United States and Iran. Referring to “Wishes and Dreams: Iran’s New Generation Emerges”, an exhibition of Iranian art shown in Washington in 2007, the then Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice commented that the artists in the show were representing “the great culture that Iran has, a culture that goes back for so many centuries”, before going on to note that the “American people can see another side of Iran and see what the artists of Iran are doing.” Implicit within both statements is a call for culture to do what politics has effectively failed to in three decades of fraught, if not downright belligerent, relations between the two countries: open up a level of cultural dialogue that is commensurate with political respect and a degree of mutual understanding. Obama’s calls for dialogue based upon cultural respect, placed alongside earlier calls from figures such as Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, and Condoleeza Rice (the latter being representative of a government that was not particularly inclined to dialogue as such), also needs to be understood in light of Ayotollah Mohammad Khatami’s earlier call in 1998. During an extended interview with none other than CNN, the then President of Iran, who was known for his reformist stance, called for a dialogue “between civilizations and nations [that] is different from political relations.” Khatami, interestingly, went on to propose an “exchange of professors, writers, scholars, artists, journalists, and tourists.” We seem to have arrived at a point where cultural exchange is being utilized as a modus vivendi to promote political rapprochement — and to such ends, I would suggest, culture often lends itself more easily and with more nuance than political rhetoric. And, it is within this context that we can begin to see both the cultural implications, if not sociopolitical ramifications, of a show such as Iran Inside Out. We may want to ask, in light of these remarks, what this show actually tells us about Iran and its relationships to itself and the West. We may also want to pause and ask how a show that takes Iran, however discursively, as a starting point for its curatorial strategy can avoid the problems associated with the regionalist inflections of colonial and latterly neo-colonial discourse. This is to remind us that a favored colonial ploy was to homogenize regions such as the Middle East — whatever that term actually means — and thereafter promote a regional and ultimately uniform interpretation of what were in fact discrete political, social and religious entities. To avoid this, we must appeal to an expanded understanding of Iranian visual culture and the trope of Diaspora enables precisely such a de-regionalized, trans-national, heterogeneous, and multi-vocal sense of Iranian culture to emerge. Allied to this point is the further observation that Iranian art, long seen as geographically indigenous and outside of the Western canon, has become not only a global phenomenon but an increasingly visible and influential component of contemporary art practices. Artists such as Shirin Neshat, Nicky Nodjoumi, Timo Nasseri, and Mitra Tabrizian, to name but a few, have long had followings outside of Iran and have enjoyed extended careers in cities such as New York, Berlin and London. We reach a crucial stage here within which to understand what is happening in contemporary Iranian art: it is a globalized practice with sites of production and reception that stretch from Teheran to Toronto, Shiraz to Sydney, Qazvin to Queens, and Esfahan to the East End of London. In its eclectic choice of artists — ranging from established names to lesser known figures — working within and outside of Iran, Iran Inside Out both revels in international and global developments and simultaneously reflects upon the often complex geopolitics that underwrites global cultural production and, more specifically, the socio-political ambiguities and aesthetic nuances of so-called Iranian visual culture.
Anthony Downey
Anthony Downey is the Programme Director of the M.A. course in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London. An editorial board member of Third Text, he has published essays, criticism and interviews in numerous international journals. Recent and forthcoming publications include “Diasporic Communities and Global Networks: The Contemporaneity of Iranian Art Today”, in Different Sames: New Perspectives in Contemporary Iranian Art, forthcoming 2009; “Zones of Indistinction: Giorgio Agamben’s Bare Life and the Ethics of Aesthetics,” Third Text (Summer 2008); “At the Limits of the Image: Representations of Torture in Popular Culture,” Brumaria, 10 (Spring 2009); and “Thresholds of a Coming Community: Photography and Human Rights, Aperture (February 2009). Downey is currently researching a book, The Ethics of the Real: Politics and Aesthetics (forthcoming, 2010).