At first glance Keeping Up Appearances, which opened last month at Dubai's B21 gallery, seems to be a classic example of art imitating life. The exhibition of works by three leading Iranian artists could be seen as a timely critique of the country's post-election landscape. However, the show was curated months before the events of early June captured the world's attention. Although all outwardly provocative in their work and occupying similar political territory, Ramin Haerizadeh, Shahpari Sohaie and Jinoos Taghizadeh have three distinctly different styles as artists. Haerizadeh is known for his use of photography and digital techniques to subvert reality, his series Bad Hejab does just this. The artist often achieves his satirical ends by superimposing his own bearded face over those of his subjects, giving the images a certain uncomfortable uniformity.
The photo artist Shahpari Sohaie's series Coca-Cola is rather more direct. It is a collection of photographs commissioned by the US magazine Fortune, showing the proliferation of forbidden American consumer goods within contemporary Iranian life. Full of contradiction and questions about personal choice, the images show the pace of change occurring in parts of the country. Finally, the conceptual artist Jinoos Taghizadeh completes the show with her series of reproduced newspaper front pages from the republic's first weeks. The black and white printed pages are embellished by the artist with colourful images from Europe's renaissance and enlightenment periods.
The three separate series all attempt to focus on elements of Iranian life as they existed before the events of early June. Yet somehow they resonate with a sense of foreboding. Haerizadeh's Bad Hejab refers to the country's 2007 crackdown on what Iranian authorities deemed "un-Islamic dress". The campaign, which was reported in the world's media, saw more than 100 women arrested in a day for showing too much hair from beneath their headscarves or wearing tightly fitted jackets.
Haerizadeh, who now lives in Dubai, used real-life images of women targeted in the sweep from newspapers, websites and blogs, as a starting point. The pictures were blown up and digitally altered to include the artist's face, then printed on watercolour paper. The result is a nightmarish vision with blurred edges and vivid colours. Most striking though are the women's faces. At first, their grotesque new appearances seem dehumanising, although this could not be further from Haerizadeh's aim. Instead, the artist asks what effect the government's measures has on the women as individuals.
Sohaie also focuses on Iran's women, presenting photographs of shoppers in front of shelves stocked full of Coca-Cola bottles, tubes of Pringles and other iconic American brands. The pictures neither herald nor condemn Iran's growing consumer culture. Instead they present it as a simple reality and document a shift in the country towards a globalised world. Sohaie's women are often dwarfed by giant brands on posters or the sides of vehicles. Their figures appear almost like silhouettes, cut out of the shots as if they do not belong, as the branded goods consume each picture.
Whereas Sohaie is focused on today's consumer culture, Taghizadeh's work looks to the past, deep into the roots of the country's revolution. Rock, Paper, Scissors is a series of newspaper pages from 1978, altered to include holographic images by the artist. The headlines, written in Farsi, read: "The regime of Iran becomes an Islamic Republic" and "Brazil forbids Shah residency." Each page has a different picture embedded by the artist, including a work by Caravaggio, considered one of European art's greatest rebels.
Taghizadeh's pages are not only powerful and satirical, they are also beautiful. With their bold and colourful embellishments, they contain an unusual certainty and strength of spirit. Although Keeping Up Appearances combines three deeply critical takes on a country by its own citizens, their work is never cynical or without hope for the nation's future. The Keeping Up Appearances exhibition at the B21 gallery runs until September 10.
