Maria Kheirkhah

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(selected by Cherry Smyth)

Portraits of a Suspect, 2006

Maria Kheirkhah explores issues of identity and cultural dissonance through installation, photography and sculpture. With a strong knowledge of both European and Middle Eastern cultures, Kheirkhah manages to address the misconceptions and outline the parallels between them. In 'See, Hear, Speak' (2003) she uses her own hair as a veil to question ways in which women in each culture are silenced and have to endure their position. Using a soundtrack associated with belly dancing, it restricts the shot to a close-up, thereby denying the exoticising gaze. She at once creates an identity and conceals it, conveying her sense of frustration with being caught between both worlds.

'In Love with a Red Wall' (2003) looks at the ideological walls we have all grown up with, whether its the Berlin Wall, the Wailing Wall or the cinematic wall of romantic projections. She uses the visual poetry of the Farsi language to great effect in 'Khamoosh', 2001. Khamoosh means unlit, silent, dead and in lighting a series of candles laid out in the shape of the word, the artist defies its meaning and power to silence her. Kheirkhah makes a poignant comment on exile and the life-force of belonging in 'Baged Air from Yazd', 2005, in which she captured air from a desert region in Central Iran and brought it back to inhale in the UK.

A more recent photographic series 'Portraits of a Suspect' (2006) uses humour to highlight Islamophobia in Western culture and highlight the ways she is tempted to hide her Muslim faith. The strength of Kheirkhah's powerful interventions are their multi-entry viewpoints, demystifying the Iranian female subject while also questioning the role of women in the West. I have nominated Kheirkhah for Open Frequency to support an important artist - she is at a crucial point in her career and deserves more recognition. (Cherry Smyth).

Born and raised in the North of Iran, Kheirkhah first came to the UK in 1979 where she pursued her art education, specialising in sculpture. She travelled back to Iran in 1988, teaching at two major universities in Tehran, Alzahra University and The Academy of Arts. Since her return to the UK in the early 1990s she has exhibited extensively both in the UK and internationally.

Kheirkhah's cross-disciplinary works achieve an interplay of poetic, formal and conceptual devices, using a range of metaphors to explore the dual influences which have shaped her intellectually, emotionally and artistically. She is as much influenced by her Iranian heritage as Western culture, having absorbed the formal language of Western art for the past 15 years: her Eastern influences are embedded in classical and contemporary Persian arts - classical 16th-century miniature paintings, Persian architecture, both sacred and secular, and many contemporary Iranian film makers who explore these themes; her Western influences are just as extensive, particularly the work of Lebanon-born artist Mona Hatoum and Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid.¹

The performative works see the artist employing her own body to map out instances of trauma, memory and spatial navigation.² Dealing with the personal rather than the explicitly political, the works are charged with issues relating to identity politics, though are not the result of a process of making visible a critical, theoretical or literary position, but rather inflected with many influences, often in an oblique or subliminal way. As Sara Raza discusses in 'Travelling Light' (published below), Kheirkhah's conceptual performances reflect upon ideas concerning home, sanctuary and space which straddle both the West and the East, inspired by 'a reciprocal desire to comprehend existence as one moves from one sphere to another, utilising both the public and private domain of the UK and her native Iran, opening up a two-way dialogue between cultures ... The visual journey that she carries out implies a unique approach to the poetics of immediacy within the discourse of feminist practices, both actual and assumed, principally defying stereotyped notions of mild and subdued 'feminine' or 'feminised' approaches concerning gender and ethnicity'.³

Dr Amna Malik, lecturer at the Slade School of Art, UCL, London, has written extensively on issues of Diaspora-based art practices in Europe and the USA, including the work of Shirin Neshat, another prominent Iranian-born artist. Malik remarks on Neshat and Kheirkhah's differing approach to referencing Iranian cultural politics in their respective practices: 'Shirin Neshat's films, made by a crew of Iranian-Americans, are a series of melancholic meditations on an Iran that has vanished and arguably only exists in the nostalgic memories of the Diaspora. If her filmic vocabulary finds its textual inspiration in Iranian women writers, its visual form is drawn from European art films as much as contemporary Iranian film, and marks the significance of a visual language that is syncretic. By contrast Maria Kheirkhah's sculptures deploy space as a politicised arena within a practice that is deeply conditioned by debates in the West concerning post-colonialism and art practice, drawing upon the Minimalist sculptures of Mona Hatoum and Rasheed Araeen, both prominent contributors to the British black arts movement of the 1980s. If Kheirkhah's references to Iranian cultural politics are deliberately oblique, they nonetheless condition her awareness of the need to counter the orientalism of Iran and the Middle East in western representations.'⁴

Maria Kheirkhah - Statement

A situation has arisen between a particular person and the wall, which raises a multi-layered group of issues such as complexity of language, perception, illusions, desires, endurance and pain. Simultaneously the inanimate is a symbol for the seeming unresponsiveness of monolithic stereotyping, expectation and cultural misunderstanding. A desire to be understood, The East versus West, domestic versus global.

Text accompanying 'In Love With a Red Wall', photographic triptych, 2003

Locating and positioning myself as the other within a Western context often generates questions around issues of language, social and individual politics, authenticity and personal sincerity, articulated visually and conceptually. My position as an artist has naturally progressed to include the exploration of decision and position-making and, therefore, a movement towards demystifying and highlighting the notion of difference, whether personally, globally, socially or politically. I believe this to be a significant part of my current position in art making.

I am currently focusing on two extensive bodies of work under the working titles of 'The Anatomy of Ignorance' and 'Portraits of a Belly Dancer'. These new bodies of work specifically involve text (comprising the culmination of different perspectives drawn from my own writing, together with other critics and writers, on the different elements and issues raised in my work), sound and music as signifiers associated with specific time in history, implied and manifested in forms such as curating, text, documentary, performances, installation and sculptures. (Maria Kheirkhah, 2006)

Biography

Maria Kheirkhah studied sculpture at the University of Central England (MA Fine Art, 1986-87) and Surrey Institute of Art and Design (BA (Hons), 1983-1986). Her selected exhibitions include:

Portraits of a belly dancer, Brixton village, London, 2006; Art East Biennale 2005, Bishkek, Kyrgystan, 2005; Kisss on surveillance, Melbourne, Australia [travelling internationally], 2005; Souvenier, Florence Trust, London, 2005; Performance, Artivist, Peckham Square, London, 2004; Curator, the Nomad Travelling Show, Babol, Iran, 2003; Khamoosh, Horniman Museum, London, 2003; Heroes & Holies, Ev+a biennale, Limerick City Gallery, Ireland, 2002; Stories of 2002 nights, Briggite March Galerie, Stuttgart, Germany, 2002; No Place, Pump House Gallery, London, 2001; Pellegrinaggio e memoria, Martini Arte Internazionale, Cavagnolo, Italy, 2001; Versus VI, Velan Centro Darte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy, 2000; Silent Carpet, site-specific installation, Camberwell Arts Week, 1999; Chasing Dreams, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 1999; Contemporary art, The Museum of Contemporary Arts, Tehran, Iran, 1990; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 1987.

Her work has been reviewed in a number of papers and publications including Performing Difference, published by Arts Admin, 2004; Global mediation: Leeds 2006, published by the AAH; From exile to Transnationalism in the Iranian artistic Diaspora, organised by The British Museum and the Iran Heritage Foundation 2005; Dr Amna Malik, Revolutionary art, Barakat foundation 2005; Sara Reza, 'Kisss, Art in Security' and 'Travelling light', n.paradoxa - international feminist art journal, Volume 17, 2006. She lives and works in London.

Current Thinking/Tate Modern

Kheirkhah will be in conversation with Cherry Smith and curator Adelaide Bannerman at Tate Modern on Saturday 10 March, 2-5pm, as one of a series of three talks examining current thinking in contemporary art. 'The Anatomy of Ignorance' will explore issues aroung themes of identity, social status and visual representation in relation to misrepresentations of the body in contemporary culture, the title of which refers to a long-term project of Kheirkhah's of evolving works and writings. For for further details about the event go to the Tate Modern website, www.tate.org.uk/modern

References/links

1. Rachel Garfield, Unpublished interview with Maria Kheirkhah, 2003.
2. Sara Raza, 'Travelling Light', N.Paradoxa/Documenta 12 special edition, Vol. 17, January 2006.
3. Ibid.
4. Dr Amna Malik, abstract, 'From Exile to Transnationalism in the Iranian Artistic Diaspora', for lecture series, Persian Culture and Heritage, The British Museum, 2005.

March 2007

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