Unquiet Fury: the Women’s Uprising in Iran

Unquiet Fury

Nazanin Moghbeli

the Women’s Uprising in Iran Unquiet Fury: January

28 - March 11, 2023

Nazanin Moghbeli

Philadelphia, PA 19122

presented by

The Crane Local Gallery

1400 North American Street

The killing of Mahsa Amini has unleashed the once quiet fury of women in Iran, women whose rights are suppressed by the Islamic Republic. Their demand for relief from mandatory veiling imposed by the Islamic republic is echoed in this historic Iranian Ballad, entitled Morghe Sahar (Bird of Dawn), written by Mohammad-Taqi Bahar and put to music by Morteza Neidavoud in 1921. Some consider this song to be the “unofficial anthem of freedom in Iran (Farnaz Fassihi NYT, 2020).” The lyrics describe a caged nightingale, urging her to sing with passion and break free. It has been sung in different political contexts, from the constitutional revolution of 1921 through the dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah, and throughout the Islamic Revolution, always representing a cry for freedom.

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Morghe Sahar 2022 Ink on Clayboard 5 x 5 inches

Bird of Dawn

morning/dawn bird, please start mourning morning/dawn bird, please start mourning further deepen/renew my pain with a sigh that rains fire, break this cage and overturn it

flightless nightingale, get out of the cage sing humanity’s song of freedom, sing for the freedom of human being from the breath of the masses, fill the open earth with fire

oppression of the oppressor/cruelness of the oppressor, the hunter’s

oppression

it has left my nest dwindling in the wind O god, O universe, O nature, make our dark evening into dawn

it’s a new a spring, the flowers have bloomed, the clouds in my eyes, are filled with dew this cage, like my heart, is suffocated and dark

oh fiery sigh! start a flame in this cage, nature’s hand, don’t cut short the flower of my life give the lover a look, my young flower, make it more!

you: heartless bird, . the story of suffering & missing, make it brief! make

it brief, make it brief you heartless bird, make it brief! make it brief, the story of suffering

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2022

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Morghe Sahar

Mixed Media 8 x 10 inches

Strands

2022

Mixed Media

8 x 6 inches

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Strands: Ajax 2022

Mixed Media

8 x 6 inches

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Here, lines from Morghe Sahar are layered into text from original CIA documents outlining the coup, titled “Operation Ajax,“ that overturned Iran’s democracy in 1953. This coup had its origins in British and US objectives to prevent Iranian Prime Minister Mosaddegh from nationalizing Iranian oil, which was controlled by US and British interests. The coup led to the ouster of Mosaddegh and installed Mohammad Reza Shah as leader. The Shah was a monarch and dictator who was seen as a puppet of the west (NYT 2000). Historians point to this coup as a turning point in Iranian history, and credit this event with laying the foundation for the Islamic revolution.

Historian Mark Gasiorowski, states: “What the coup did was to take out the moderate, secular, element of Iranian politics and enabled radical Islamists and radical leftists to emerge as key opposition factions in place of it [in the 1960s and ‘70s]. The coup had this big impact of essentially eliminating this pro-democracy faction and that had a very important impact on Iranian politics in the intervening years.”

This layering of historical events is mirrored in the layering of text with image, poetry with CIA documents, as well as lines written in the calligraphy of my mother, Manzar Moghbeli, to show the dialogue between past and present, the historical and the personal.

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2022 Mixed Media 14 x 11 inches 10

Operation Ajax Summary

2022

Mixed Media

10 x 10 inches

Operation Ajax Undone

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Mixed Media

12 x 12 inches

Operation Ajax 2022

12

2022

Photogravure, graphite

22 x 14.5 inches

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Operation Ajax

2022

Photogravure, graphite

22 x 14.5 inches

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Operation Ajax 2

2022

Photogravure, collage

22 x 14.5 inches

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Operation Ajax 1

Morghe Sahar 2 2022 Mixed Media 28 x 18 inches 16

Operation Ajax Contents

2022

Mixed Media

14 x 14 inches

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Mixed Media

5 x 5 inches

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Operation Ajax 2022

2022

Mixed Media

6 x 6 inches

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Operation Ajax Board

2022

Mixed Media

6 x 6 inches

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Operation Ajax Board

Operation Ajax, Written By 2022 Mixed Media

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8 x 6 inches

On September 16, 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22 year old woman, died after being imprisoned and beaten by morality police of the Islamic Republic of Iran for allegedly violating mandatory hijab (veiling) laws. This arrest and death sparked protests from Iranians that have been met with violent retaliation by security forces, leading to at least 516 deaths and 19,000 detainments (NPR 2023). Brutal crackdowns on school and university protests have led to casualties among children and adolescents. Women around the world expressed support for protestors by cutting their hair in the street, echoing the action of protestors in Iran unveiling and cutting their hair in public as a sign of resistance to the regime’s hijab laws. These drawings are made with strands of silk to echo this act of defiance and resistance.

Strand 2 2022 Ink on Clayboard 5 x 5 inches

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Strand 2022 Ink, graphite, silk 8 x 8 inches

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Strand 1 2022 Ink, graphite, silk 8 x 8 inches

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Strand 6 2022 Ink on Clayboard 5 x 5 inches

Strand 7 2022 Ink on Clayboard

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5 x 5 inches

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Strand 3 2022 Ink, graphite, silk 8 x 8 inches

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Strand 2 2022 Ink, graphite, silk 8 x 8 inches

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Strand 4.1 2022 Ink, graphite, silk 8 x 8 inches

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Strand 5 2022 Ink on Clayboard 5 x 5 inches

Nazanin Moghbeli BIOGRAPHY

by Jake Halpern, New York Times Journalist, Winner of Pulitzer Prize for journalism

As a young girl – even in the midst of war – Nazanin Moghbeli had a heightened awareness of color. Growing up in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war, she recalls the nights when her darkened bedroom flickered with colored light – oranges, reds, and yellows – an eerie spectacle punctuated by the distant thuds of explosions. Other nights, she hid in the basement and there was only blackness, deep, consuming and eternal. Her days, by contrast, were often strangely normal: school, music lessons, playing outside with her cousins. In the afternoons, she practiced calligraphy. She was left-handed, but was forced to use her right, because the bamboo ghalams were beveled only in one direction. She adapted. The whole family did. Her parents –both musically inclined – practiced, with her mother singing and her father playing the santour. And still the bombs fell. It all mingled: the music and the dissonance, the creation and the destruction, the small moments of bliss and the terror. This was the fabric of her childhood and it can be seen in the gorgeous and varied artwork in this book.

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Nazanin was instilled, from an early age, with a reverence for Iran’s past –the democracy of Mosadegh, the poetry of Rumi, and Persian classical and folk music. This, however, was challenged by what she saw during Islamic Revolution. She resented how zealots used Islam as an excuse to amass and abuse power. As an adult, her artwork reflects that dichotomy. Her drawings utilize Iranian calligraphy, but by necessity, break from the traditional form and content. She presents a vision of Persian culture – not as an orthodoxy or a sentimental tribute to the past – but as the inspiration for something new and reimagined – steeped in the past, but liberated by a freedom which eludes those who remain in her homeland. Her work is minimalist and powerful. She makes use of ancient lines – lines which connect, but do not tether her to the past.

Nazanin left Iran in 1983, at the age of nine, and moved to the United States. Her father’s medical practice and her mother’s work as an artist and calligrapher, inspired her to pursue dual careers in medicine and art. Indeed, she came to see the blood that flowed through the body as the symbolic equivalent of the ink that flowed through the nib of her pen and gave life to the paper she filled. As a cardiologist, she studied lines – the readings of the EKGs – the very measure of vitality – and as an artist she drew them. Today, her practice as a doctor informs her art, and her art provides a unique perspective which she brings to the bedside.

As a writer, I have tried my best to capture the life of the Muslim diaspora in my Pulitzer Prize winning series, Welcome to the New World. But I am an outsider, a mere interpreter. Nazanin has lived the experience and her voice and vision are exquisite, refreshing, modern, and authentic. Her lines bisect and encircle the worlds she has seen, tying them together with a simplicity that belies their elegance.

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This catalog was published to accompany the exhibition, Unquiet Fury, a solo show by Nazanin Moghbeli at The Crane Local Gallery and presented January 28th - March 11th, 2023.

Crane Arts

1400 North American Street

Philadelphia, PA 19122

cranearts.com

Curated by InLiquid

Photography by John Carlano

Biography by Jake Halpern

New York Times Journalist, Winner of Pulitzer Prize for journalism

Design by Tori Hemsath

torihemsath.com

Cover Images by Nazanin Moghbeli

Front: Operation Ajax, 2022, Mixed Media, 12 x 12 inches