Heddy’s interview
In developing countries art is not perceived as a necessity.  They don’t think of it as a tool of education.  Most people merely learn some art for pleasure or to challenge their minds.  If societies thought of art in a more holistic way, as integral to their communities, they would have realized that the occupation of art is vital to humans because it encourages people to learn and become open-minded.  Of course not everybody has to become an artist through studying art.  This, I think, is an outcome of developing societies. 

Hadi: I have rarely seen a balanced demographic distribution of gender and race in art classes in the United States.  In most art departments there are only a few African American students and, or, just few token representatives of other cultures, while the majority are white students, male and female.  Of course this generalization is based on my experience as an art student in this country.  But this observation prompts my next question about the dimension of choices that a student considers when choosing to become an artist and how this decision is influenced by his or her cultural and economic status.

Heddy: Well, the art world, for a long time, has been accused of promoting the white male while ignoring other minorities.  Although, things are changing these days.

What about yourself?  Why did you decide to be an artist? 

Hadi: The story is a complex one.  First of all, as a young male in Iran, in order to pursue art one is expected to have a solid financial background.  However, I immediately despise myself for saying that since I have seen students in art schools who came from villages and went on to become famous artists.  Anyway, I studied math and physics and was destined to become an engineer or a computer scientist but life determined otherwise. After completing high school I my interest in art, particularly in cinema and photography, steadily increased.  I think this was due to a combination of factors including my dropping out of university due to my religious affiliation, my feelings of hopelessness, wondering, and…

By pursuing art I betrayed the hopes of my underprivileged family and I don’t think that my father will ever forgive me for that.  My utopia broke down.  As a supposedly promising student with straight “A”s throughout my school years, it was expected that I would enjoy a prosperous life.  But gradually I discovered a strong desire within myself to do something that was against everything.  Art fits this mold of rebellion. It took me a long time to understand the implications of pursuing art.

I ended up leaving Iran and residing in Pakistan for three years before coming to the US.  After pursuing art for several years I envisioned a utopian path for myself – in the role of the director, the writer, and the photographer. Therefore, it became a decision of faith.  Art became my religion as I developed fanatic ideas about it. I had a strong prejudice about what I perceived as art.  But through self-study this changed,

Hadi:  How do you see yourself as a multicultural artist in American society? 

Heddy:  My greatest hope is that my work will talk about issues that are important to people.  My work has to convey a message on a societal level.  Some sort of activism is essential but that has to evolve from my personal experience. I think that role of art and the artist in society is crucial.  There has to be an agenda for an artist.  Work has to carry a message.  For me, the source of this agenda comes from my personal experience and I strive to make my work timeless.

Hadi: You mentioned activism indicating that by its nature your work has some political resonance. So, could you explain what you mean when you use the adjective “timeless” to describe your work?

Heddy: Several of my previous works reflected what I aspired to become. Some were aggressive in their content.  And most positioned themselves specifically in time and space.  But I think it is most important to draw from my experiences and to make works that are more ambiguous and which address broader question of human experience. 

Obviously, no matter what kind of work I make, because I am a woman from Middle East, the land from which these experiences derive, the experience of people of Middle East and experience of an immigrant are all embedded in my work.  But, looking back, works that I have done in the past have become somehow dated because they speak specifically about particular events of post-war history in Iran.  I think that kind of work has its place but now I seek to conceive works that are ambiguous and without the possibility of becoming dated. 

Issues of immigration, including the loss of identity and displacement touch many people on basic levels.  I seek to move away from direct reference to events to a more encompassing form of representation. 

Hadi: Does this make your work less political?

Heddy: I don’t think so.  It certainly makes it more difficult to access.  Rather than having a direct anti-government, anti-male, or anti-female, message, I strive to deliver the sense of the aftermath of an event or issue without forming propaganda against it.

Hadi: Does your position have anything to do with the current tendency of moving away from direct confrontation to more subtle forms of expression in art in general?

Heddy: I think both positions have their own place and purposes.  Some audiences tend to engage more when a work is less confrontational while some others become motivated with confrontation.  With regard to my works, this does not necessarily make me less confrontational because I may use the combination of the two to achieve more ambiguity.  For example, you don’t need to know that I am an Iranian woman from Iran to address issues about the abuse of women in my works even though I may use images of abuse to confront my viewers. 

Hadi: Isn’t this just another form of political propaganda, needless to say there is nothing wrong with political propaganda? 

Heddy: No, It’s not.  I know I use the word confrontation.  But, I don’t want just to make works for Western audiences who agree with my objectives.  I also want to create an atmosphere that can engage those who do not share my views.  I think that artists have responsibility to make works that are not just decorative.  What I define as a professional artist is someone who searches for something or a way of looking at art as if there is a hypothesis, an objective to achieve. To me this is about approaching art in scientific way that is not just technological.  There are plenty of artists out there who make good money from their art but that is not my objective. 

Hadi: So, are you in favor of the pure democratization of art and of distancing yourself from the tradition of centuries of objectification and the value-driven art market?

Heddy: No, if someone wants to buy my work, I have no problem with it.  What I mean is that there is a fundamental difference between a work of art that fits above someone’s sofa and another work that has something to say.  I think that the art market has the capacity to attract both categories.  An artwork does not necessarily have to be beautiful.  I don’t quite understand what you mean by democratization of artwork. 

Hadi, I mean, there is a movement that believes that art does not necessarily have to be valued as capital. 

Heddy: But it is not the artist that creates the market.

Hadi: Well, artists respond to the market.

Heddy: Full time artists need money to make art, but I don’t believe that they drive the market.  The market is driven by art galleries, art collectors and art production companies.  Interestingly, this is the way that masses get to see the art.  Of course, art has a commodity value and an investment value since everything is for sale. 

Hadi: So, does the market value of an artwork have any correlation with its artistic value?

Heddy: I don’t think artists should make art that sells.

Hadi: As an Iranian woman living in the US and pursuing art, how do you compare female representation in Iran versus the United States?

Heddy: I think in both cultures the female figure is erased in a way but in a very decorative manner. 

Hadi: What do you mean?

Heddy: In both cultures, the female figure is to be saved, to be protected, to be abused, to be exploited, and to be shot down. 

Hadi: So, even though the physical representation of the female is very different in the two cultures, in essence they share…

Heddy: Even their physical representation is identical in both cultures. 

Hadi: But in Iran women have to cover their bodies with Chador or other forms…

Heddy: Exactly, that’s what I mean.  It is the two extremes separated by a hair’s breadth.  The exploitation of the western woman is in stripping her to her nudity and the exploitation of Middle Eastern woman is in covering everything up.  At least, that’s how I see it.  That’s why I see a circle.  At extremes, this is the stereotypical image of one woman, once in Chador, and once nude.  Chaador in someway is the least of the problem. 

Hadi: what do you mean by that?

Heddy: Chador is a visibly overt form of exploitation and shutting down of the woman.  But in western film, advertising, and media we constantly perceive the woman’s body in the nude, whether it is to be loved, to be raped, and to be abused.  So, because she can be nude, without an army of men beating her, then she is perceived as free.  Well, for that actress, to secure that film role, she is probably under a contract to display her breasts. 

Hadi: But she has the choice whether or not to sign the contract.

Heddy: Yes, but the culture of commodity is dominant in this society.  Total covering and uncovered are two sides of one card.  For example, in two of my passport images taken with gap of fourteen years one shows my hair covered and in the other photograph I have no cover.  I am approaching the same problem conceptually.  One could even argue that the abuse of women in the West perpetuates the abuse of women in the East.   

Hadi: That is, the one causes the other? 

Heddy: If you ask the Moslem woman (one who covers her hair, for example), to explain the premise of her action, She may reply that she fails to see anything beneficial in the exploitation of women in the West.  By this she primarily references the issue of sexuality. 

Hadi: So, if I understand you correctly, the issue is not whether women have a choice but rather the problem is with the mentality that dominates a particular culture.    Until that mentality changes, one cannot truly talk about choices. 

Heddy: Right.  In Western society, professional women are still not paid and promoted equal to men.  Feminism has been instrumental in bringing positive changes but many forms of discrimination are still with us today.  However, the blame is not on men in particular.  I think that they are also abused much as women are.  In Middle Eastern countries, men are prompted to think that they are so bad and weak that women have to cover themselves otherwise they (the men) may become prone to bad thoughts.  This is another way of saying that men are out of control.  In other words, men in such countries address their lack of self-control by controlling women.  This is the fear mechanism.  In the West, the situation is similar.  So, I think that in the two sets of problems while the extremes are different and the distances are different, it is essentially one problem. 

Hadi: Let me ask you a personal question.  What do you think about wearing Chaador?

Heddy: I have as little interest in wearing Chaador as I have in wearing bikini. They both scare me.  With regard to Chaador, for me it is an enigma since I have been forced to wear it at gun-point. 

Hadi: After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, women were forced to cover their hair and to comply with the strict dress code in society. 

Heddy: Well, a group of women used to wear Chaador even before revolution.  At that time, if I can remember, I used to associate them with being poor, uneducated, or religious.  My great grandmother was one of these women.  This stereotype has changed since all educated women in Iran follow the Islamic dress code for fear of being arrested. 

Hadi: Of course this stereotype existed in Iran and it was very strong but let’s not forget that historically, removing Chaador was not initially favored by women in Iran.  This was because removing Chador was part of a campaign to westernize the society.  The change was abrupt and unexpected and it was done by force similar to the actions of the revolutionary guard after the revolution.  Women were surprisingly abused in both examples.  There was not a gradual preparation or asocietal assimilation at large toward it.  The government’s decision was based on the theory that since the world is becoming modern, it does not make sense for women to have Chaador anymore.  Many women ended up getting locked up in their homes forever as the aftermath of that policy. 

Heddy: Well, the perception that modernity is synonymous with women not wearing Chaador anymore is a very powerful one.  It comes down to same issue of sexual relations. 

Hadi: I agree with you.  Of course, this goes back to religious authority that is almost completely male dominated.  But, I also want to draw a comparative analysis between attitudes of women in Pakistan to their traditional customs relative to the western style and that of their Iranian counterparts.  Though I  lived in Pakistan for just three years I observed that women had a sense of pride toward their traditional customs.  This was something I never saw in Iran. 

Chaador is the traditional veil that Iranian women cover themselves to appear in society.  Chaador covers all parts of body except for the face and hands.  After Islamic revolution in Iran, black chador became the standard form of dress code.  Some less strict dress forms gradually substituted black chaador.  Today, especially young women in urban areas find various alternatives to show part of their hair and use more attractive colors while maintaining the dress code.  Islamic authorities in Iran have loosened their grip on such issues in recent years.