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The Question of Identity vis-à-vis Exoticism in Contemporary Iranian Art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Hamid Keshmirshekan
Hamid Keshmirshekan*
Affiliation:
Iranian Academy of Arts
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Abstract

This essay explores two primary concerns in the art and artistic practice of contemporary Iran, namely “identity” (i.e. local, historical, imagined and collective identity and also self-identity) and “exoticism” (which appears inevitably related to the first), both of which (identity and exoticism) involve challenges relating to the “self” and “other” and the issue of “expectation”. It suggests that these issues see broader contextual socio-political parallels. The first apprehension relates to the concept of identity which addresses how artists have interpreted contemporary aesthetics in the light of national and indigenous ideology. The second refers to the ever-present obsession with cultural and frequently social concern with which Iranian artists are engaged within the country. The two concerns are integrated, in the way that the second is seen to be the outcome of the first. Some critiques are based on the issues of cultural commodification, anti-canonical West, cultural formulation, and also the stereotypes rooted in the preference and interest of the market.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , September 2010 , pp. 489 - 512
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2010

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Footnotes

The present essay is based on a paper presented in the seminar at the Khalili Research Centre (KRC), Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford University, in September 2008. The seminar and the revised essay were in fact part of a British Academy research project supported by the ESRC and AHRC to which I am very grateful. I am also indebted to Professor James W Allan of the KRC, my host in Oxford University, for his support and encouragement throughout my fellowship in Oxford University.

References

1 See Keshmirshekan, Hamid, “Discourses on Postrevolutionary Iranian Art: Neotraditionalism during the 1990s,” Muqarnas, 23 (2006): 131–157CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Keshmirshekan, Hamid, “Contemporary Iranian Art: The Emergence of New Artistic Discourses,” Iranian Studies, 40, no. iii (2007): 335–366CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 It refers to the 1997 presidential election in which the reformist Mohammad Khatami was elected president of the Islamic Republic. It marked a major turning point in the social and political arenas towards a more democratic environment. After the election, the new administration promised increased freedom of the press and other cultural reforms. Iranian art too witnessed a new period of development which was unprecedented in the post-revolutionary era. With this shift in artistic administration, the new custodians established new policies, including an attempt to support visual art domestically and to communicate with the outside world.

3 Cottam, R. W., Nationalism in Iran (London, 1979), 29Google Scholar.

4 For further examination of concepts of different generation of Iranian artists, see Keshmirshekan, Hamid, “Reproducing Modernity: Contemporary Iranian Art since the Late 1990s,” in Amidst Shadow and Light: Contemporary Iranian Art and Artist, ed. Hamid Keshmirshekan (Tehran, 2010)Google Scholar (forthcoming).

5 See ibid.

6 The art and paralleled socio-politics in 1960s Iran have been addressed in Keshmirshekan, Hamid, “Neo-traditionalism and Modern Iranian Painting: The Saqqa-khaneh School in the 1960s,” Journal of Iranian Studies, 38, no. 4 (December 2005): 607–630CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 See Keshmirshekan, “Neo-traditionalism and Modern Iranian Painting,” 607–630.

8 During the 1940s and 1950s, the term “national art” or “school of national art” were repeatedly used by both modernist artists and cultural administrators and some attempts were even made by artists to produce this kind of art. For further elaboration of this process see Keshmirshekan, “Neo-traditionalism and Modern Iranian Painting,” 607–630.

9 The author's interview with Iranian artists, journalists and critics 2006–08.

14 Jahanbagloo, Ramin, “Introduction,” in Iran Between Tradition and Modernity, ed. by Jahanbagloo, Ramin (Oxford, 2004), xviiGoogle Scholar.

10 Vaziri, Mostafa, Iran as Imagined Nation: The Construction of National Identity (New York, 1993), 199.Google Scholar

11 Pan-Islamism echoed in themes such as export of the Revolution and denunciation of secular nationalism.

12 Mashayekhi, Mehrdad, “The Politics of Nationalism and Political Culture,” in Iran: Political Culture in the Islamic Republic, ed. by Farsoun, Smith K. and Mehrdad Mashayekhi (London and New York, 1992), 111Google Scholar. Mashayekhi also points out that “among the political leaders and the intellectual architects of the Islamic Republic one can even identify major pre-revolutionary writings and speeches that had a strong nationalistic echo. It is no surprise then that the majority of Islamic thinkers speak of an ‘Islamo-Iranian’ culture and identity; they find a symbiotic relation between Islam and Iran” (ibid).

13 Explanation in terms of cultural specificities, sliding into cultural essentialism, are well illustrated in the work of Badie, Bertrand, Les deux etats: pouvoir et societe en Occident et en terre d' Islam (Paris, 1986)Google Scholar, which presents a detailed argument for the historical and ideational distinction and contrast between the “two states”, the Western and the Islamic.

15 For example, the wealthy Persian Gulf states recently started to play an increasing role as a market for artists from other regional countries, including Iranian art; their museum infrastructure has been developed and international events created, like the Sharjah Biennial or Christie's Auctions in Dubai.

17 Jocks, Heinz-Norbert, “The Vision which Strikes Everything with Similarity,” Nukta Art, 3, no. 2 (2008): 54Google Scholar.

16 Mosquera, Gerardo, “The Marco Polo Syndrome, Some Problems around Art and Eurocentrism,” in Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985, ed. by Kocur, Zoya and Leung, Simon (Oxford, 2005), 219Google Scholar.

18 Mosquera, “The Marco Polo Syndrome,” 219.

19 Ibid.

20 See Keshmirshekan, Hamid, “Globalization and the Question of Identity: Discourses on Contemporary Iranian Art during the Past Two Decades,” in Amidst Shadow and Light: Contemporary Iranian Art and Artist, ed. by Keshmirshekan, Hamid (Tehran, 2010)Google Scholar (forthcoming).

22 Ibid., 234–235.

21 Fisher, Jean, “The Syncretic Turn, Cross-cultural Practices in the Age of Multiculturalism,” in Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985, ed. by Kocur, Zoya and Leung, Simon (Oxford, 2005), 234Google Scholar.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 Hall, Stuart, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonialism, ed. by Williams, Patrick and Chrisman, Laura (Cambridge, 1993), 393Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., 394.

27 Interview with the author, 2005.