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Interview with Sohayla Vafai [text]
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Hadi Gharabaghi
October 19, 2005
iranian.com

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Excerpts from Interview with Sohayla Vafai:
Hadi:  How do you describe the art practice in Iran versus the United States? 

Sohayla: I lost my confidence as an artist after my immigration back in early 80’s.  In Iran, you would wait till others talk about you.  You would see yourself in a humble manner always ready for growth and improvement while being shy to express yourself in other terms but the actual artwork. So, there was no limit in defining what a good work was.  In the US, I found out that I had to advertise myself.  I had to sell myself vigorously; otherwise, I would have not had any value. 

In early years of my work, many suggested that I should have prepared exhibition of my works but I always thought that I was not good enough to do so.  You see, I brought with me the Iranian mentality and lived with it for years.    It was as if I was thrown into a soccer field and I had no choice but to play.  I was taught in American schools that half of me was going to be an artist and the next half a promoter.  I was also taught to strip myself of what society had defined for me.  This was like searching within self.

Hadi:So, there was a core and a shell.  You were supposed to break the shell and reach the core. 

Sohayla: Yes, but this is all relative.  How far can one go to know what is self and what is not?  Overall, there was some truth about it.  For example, dominant styles and ideologies within the culture influence how artists feel about or approach toward reality.  I had both periods in my artistic careers in which I have been strongly influenced by conceptual artists who followed certain agendas or those who only worked with their materials while freeing themselves of concepts.  I have a collection of handmade papers beside my political and conceptual installations.  Art market, however, pushes the artist to come up with one definite style and advance that to perfection.  This makes artwork more sellable but not necessarily more valuable.  Looking at my career, I sometimes feel that my multi style approach to art has not benefited my career. 

Hadi:Your argument can be applied to current tendency in art schools in the US to push for abstraction versus European schools that emphasize traditional foundations.

Sohayla: In my time, I experienced both teachers who wanted to separate me from my foundations and those who wanted to bring me back to it. 

Hadi: How about the post September 11 era?  What is your take on it? 

Sohayla: I think that artists in the US have faced an emotional crisis especially after September 11.  The cold attitudes of abstraction for the sake of abstraction and political intellectualism have given in to a hot fusion of blood, smoke, and uncertainty.  Artists today are more emotional than ever.  However, one thing should not be forgotten that society at large tends to dictate to artists how they should think or act according to conventions.  Of course, artists usually respond in opposite ways.  This issue encompasses gender orientation and religious ideologies.  In contrast, an artist may want to work in completely different direction than what populous wants to see. 

Hadi:Let's talk about your conceptual works. 

Sohayla: I can talk about couple of them. I had an idea of placing a person in a cage inside of a museum.  This goes back to 20 years ago when I installed this exhibition in New York City.  I hired someone to sit inside the cage and instructed him not to talk with anyone.  He went as far as rejecting any photo request especially from the press.  I brought jail into museum with this exhibition.  My cage has traveled many places the last of which was in the Middle East Institute in summer of 2004.  I feel that I carry my cage with me wherever I go. 

Hadi:I remember that installation - it was quite challenging. You confronted the viewer by bringing a ten-square-foot cage holding a mirrored tomb into a small garden arranged in a style of a traditional Persian garden. As the viewers walked around the cage, they saw their reflections encaged in the mirrored surface of the tomb. I remember that officials of the Institute seemed a bit uncomfortable by your installation. 

Sohayla: The other work is another installation that I did during Iran Iraq war and Kurdish Massacre in Iraq.  I combined a religious ritual with the photographic documents of chemical attacks on Iraqi Kurds.  I was careful not to be too obvious in my emphasis.  Yet, the message was direct.  The exhibition looked like a religious site showing a symbolic door resonating the Islamic religious sites where people hang pieces of their clothes and wish and pray for their beloveds.  Inside the door however, the black gray room did not contain the tomb of a famous religious authority but the pictures of the massacre, which were spread on the floor and hung on the walls. 

Hadi:Let's get back to Islamic Revolution of 1979.  I was 11 at the time.  Anything I know politically or socially have to do with second-degree experience through books and quotations by others.  What do you have to say about that time? 

Sohayla: I left Iran in the turmoil of Islamic revolution.  I remember the death; I remember student’s protest in Tehran University where I studied art at the time.  At the beginning, I felt passionate about revolution.  It began as a tremendous paradigm. 

Iranian culture is like a tapestry of poetry.  After revolution, poets responded to the change.  For example, Ahmad Shamlu, the internationally known Iranian poet, responds to the new post-revolution reality when he says: “Love must be hidden in the corner of house where strangers can not find it.” In another poem, he talks about grilling a canary on the fire that is produced by burning forsythia and other flowers.  How can symbols of freedom, love, emotion, and beauty put together to form savagery and brutality?  I leave the answer to you.

Hadi:Back to the analogy of core and shell, did you actually break through any shell as part of your study in the US?

Sohayla: Yes, I did.  In my early years, I could not find myself in art classes.  I considered myself a serious artist prior to my immigration.  However, my work suddenly changed, as I could not even recognize myself.  My classmates could not connect with my works.  Eventually, I found myself pushed to the corner as a quiet student who worked hard but had little to say about her works.  I came here at the time that conceptualism was the issue in art schools.  My classmates would spend class time to explain what they meant by that line or that dot while I watched them in shock.  It took me a long time to understand them.  I started asking myself what would be important to me had I not been influenced by political forces.  I entered myself into the process of deduction to the most essential elements…. 

 

 

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