Burning Wings

Odile Burluraux on Iranian Women Artists

Samira Eskandarfar, I am here (2012). 5 min 47 sec. Courtesy the artist and Ocula Magazine.

In Conversation with Sherry Paik, Ocula Magazine

As curator at the Musée d'Art moderne de Paris (MAM) since 1990, Odile Burluraux has organised solo and group exhibitions at the museum and beyond to bring compelling and rarely seen examples of contemporary art to France.

The Power of My Hands (19 May–22 August 2021), among Burluraux's latest exhibitions at the MAM, was organised in collaboration with Angola-based independent curator and writer Suzana Sousa to show works by 16 women artists living on the African continent or in the diaspora. Including Stacey Gillian Abe, Gabrielle Goliath, Senzeni Marasela, and Portia Zvavahera, it considered the various explorations of concerns that have long followed women's lives, such as the female body, self-representation, sexuality, motherhood, beliefs, and empowerment.

Exhibition view: The Power of My Hands, Musée d'Art moderne de Paris (19 May–22 August 2021). Courtesy Musée d'Art moderne de Paris. Photo: Pierre Antoine. Courtesy Ocula Magazine.

Burluraux was also behind Hans Hartung's major retrospective exhibition La Fabrique du Geste in 2019, a project with assistant Julie Sissia, that brought together 300 works by the artist for the first time in Paris since 1969.

Manhattan exhibition combats view of Iran as 'hostile anti-American state'

Asia Society group show from Mohammed Akfami collection shows 'great diversity' of Iran’s often unseen arts scene

Untitled from the Rapture series, 1999. © Shirin Neshat. Courtesy of the artist, Noirmontartproduction, Paris, the Mohammed Afkhami Foundation and The Art Newspaper.

by Daniel Cassady, The Art Newspaper

Few other countries are as misunderstood as Iran. But an Iran exists beyond the headlines of authoritarian rule and theocratic Islam. It’s a country full of thriving artists — and they’re now on show in the US. 

Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians — The Mohammed Akfami Collection, on view at the Asia Society in Manhattan until 8 May 2022, aims to broadening one’s idea of what Iran is, or can be, by giving a profound look at the country’s dynamic contemporary arts scene.

Of the 23 mid-career and emerging artists included in the show, all but one was born in Iran and over a third still live and work in the country. Three generations are represented, with the work touching on subjects as diverse as gender identity, politics and spirituality. The work takes multiple forms, from traditional Persian figurative painting to photography and abstract sculpture.

The Unseen Women of Afghanistan

Photographer Fatimah Hossaini spent three years trying to upend Western narratives about women in her country. She didn't get to finish her work.

"Burqa behind the steering wheel," from work-in-progress by photographer Fatima Hossaini. Courtesy Guernica.

by Fatimah Hossaini, Guernica

I was born in Tehran, to parents who fled Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded. For most of my life, I knew everything about Iranian culture and history: I knew its education system, its capital; my friends, my family, everything I knew was in Iran. And I knew very little about Afghanistan — just a few stories, from my parents and grandparents. And I wondered where I belonged. I always looked for a sign.

In 2013, I visited Afghanistan for the first time, to get paperwork I needed for university. I fell in love with it. In 2018, when I was 25, I moved back permanently. I was a professor of visual art at Kabul University, and I worked as an art and documentary photographer.

I poured my heart into my personal project, a book on the unseen women of Afghanistan. I was tired of always showing the war and the poverty, always talking about the murders, the explosions. When I traveled to other countries, capitals of art and culture abroad, people would ask me, “If you’re an Afghan artist, where is your burqa?” The only thing people knew about Afghanistan was terrorism and women’s oppression, the twin sins of the Taliban. Why doesn’t the world know anything about our culture and our beauty? About our carpets, our textiles, our diversity, all of our cultural heritage? Why is it never reflected in the world? This question preoccupied me, and I think it’s why I was so inspired to work on the beautiful side of Afghanistan.

I had only five more portraits to make to finish my book when the Taliban took Kabul and, with it, the country. I had to escape with only what I could carry in two small shoulder bags. Leaving my photo project behind was one of the hardest parts of fleeing. It was everything I worked on for over three years. And what will happen to those pictures? What will happen to the women in the pictures?

I’d worked hard to find special locations — interesting places, forgotten streets — and to show off our cultural heritage. I did everything I could in these photos to show some beauty in a corner of Afghanistan. I can’t imagine I can’t go back and finish this work.

Words like fire

 Book review: Shida Bazyar's novel "Drei Kameradinnen"

Shida Bazyar's new novel is the literary surprise of the year. It tackles the pressing issues of our time, and yet it is timeless. This is a story of friendship, marginalisation and society's blindness to its own deep-seated problems. 

"'Drei Kameradinnen' demonstrates that all the talk about the lack of social relevance of art and literature is a fatal mistake. The great literary prizes, above all the German Book Prize, are meant for books like this," writes Gerrit Wustmann.  Courtesy Qantara.de.

by Gerrit Wustmann, Qantara.de

Let's get straight down to brass tacks: Shida Bazyar's second novel, "Drei Kameradinnen" (Sisters in Arms), published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in April, is the best and also the most important German-language book of 2021 – no matter what else comes out between now and December.

Bazyar has already proven that she is a brilliant narrator and an outstanding figure in contemporary German literature with her impressive debut novel "Nachts ist es leise in Teheran" (Tehran Is Peaceful at Night, 2016). Her new book is a triumph. It has all the makings of great literature, literature that will endure, that will become part of the canon.

But first things first ... The title raises a question that needs to be answered directly: Yes, the book's German title pays homage to Erich Maria Remarque's novel "Drei Kamaraden". Not only the title but also the story. This is a book about friendship, a novel about trauma. While Remarque wrote of the trauma of the First World War, Bazyar reflects on the trauma of the NSU and the series of murders it committed. But in addition to the core themes, the two novels also display further parallels: the setting for both is Berlin and, like Remarque, Bazyar never explicitly mentions the city's name. The characters in both books drink and smoke a lot, and both stories are about friends standing together firmly against the evils of the world.