Unknown by Maneli Aygani May 2012

Lady: Unknown By Maneli Aygani May 2012 3 “My dear teacher! Do we not enjoy freedom of thought? Yes, we do!” From Taj Saltaneh, Memoir book 4 1 Lady: Unknown1 Prologue, This is an essay for an art exhibition with the same name, which is created in appreciation for the effort and courage of women, who stand for their own and other’s rights. As an Iranian-born woman, my aim in this series is to challenge the stereotypical definitions of gender in my culture, and also to minimize and break free from my own fear and anger. I am interested to see how people with other cultural backgrounds will interpret the visual work and relate it to their own experience. Given the broad reality of discrimination across the world, I expect my works may gain the viewer’s sympathy, but sympathy is not enough for me; my main goal is to encourage viewers to become aware of things that might not have their full attention. 1 Lady Unknown (Banoo Nashenaas) was the nickname for one of the famous Iranian female singers in 1950s; because singing for women had been and still is an unconventional action, she had taken this nickname to keep her identity private. Her real name was Farahdokht Abbasi Taleqani and later was known as “Pooran.” 1 I was born and raised in Tehran in a culture with many contradictions. On the one hand, it is a culture with conservative traditions, discrimination, and social restrictions due to religion and Government. On the other hand, an inspiring culture still exists in Iran and has a great influence on people’s everyday life. A considerable part of this inspiration emerges from Iranian literature and poetry. Restrictions have paradoxically made Iran a fertile literary culture, as writers sought ways to avoid censorship. The literature has generally taken many different approaches in using metaphors and symbolism to write about topics that could not be approached directly. Whether sarcastic or revolutionary, the use of metaphor always reveals a circular history of societal restrictions from which Iran has never escaped. As the generations of writers show, the country has confronted these circumstances for centuries, making metaphorical language a natural part of communicating in people’s daily lives. Growing up in this society, I became interested in such complexity and its appearance in art. After moving to the United States to attend graduate school, I started continuously comparing the two cultures. Noticing the relative freedom people in the US have, I became more critical of my country’s unfair and prejudicial laws. Iran is not the only country struggling with contraventions of human rights, but I have a deeper understanding of the present issues in Iran than I do of any other country as I spent most of my life there. Given the contrast between the two cultures, there were many questions simultaneously coming to my mind as I began to incorporate my critical feelings into my artwork: Am I being fair enough? Do I need to be more cautious since I am representing a culture to another? Can I only think of my own points? How are these thoughts are 2 going to be perceived? Am I being just like the “stereotypical Media” that indicates others corruptions to blur its own? These questions seemed to grow every day, yet none of these felt relevant to what I wanted from my work. It left me wondering how I was going to be able to create art, given the political complexity of the topics. Last summer as I was visiting a friend in Tehran I was asked what my background was. Initially I started answering his question by climbing up my honorable family tree! I told him that I was the seventh grandchild of Karim Khan Zand, a ruler of Iran in the eighteenth century,2 and also somehow related to the Qajar dynasty. As he was listening to my story, my new friend started to mock me about my great speech and important family lineage, noticing that I only mentioned the men in my family history. Then he asked me if with all the pride I had for the luminous background did I know the artist/writer Taj Saltaneh, daughter of Nasir aldin Shah Qahar3? He was right to point out my inherent chauvinism. I didn’t know who she was. How could I? I never learned about her in any of my history classes. The conversation turned out to be a pivotal one, as I began to research this woman and what Iranian history she came from. My recent work takes inspirations from Qajar art. The Qajar dynasty was an Iranian royal family of Turkic descent who ruled Iran from 1785 to 1925. The period was characterized by general illiteracy, social class differences, luxurious rulers who were incapable but also art loving, as well as the sparks of constitutional revolution and the beginning of modern Iran. In my recent art I have tried to bring my concerns and ideas about current gender discriminations and stereotypes in contemporary Iran through the use of Qajar historical references, aesthetics, and symbols. 2 Karim Khan Zand (1705- 1779) was a ruler of Iran, and the founder of the Zand Dynasty. He never styled himself as "shah" or king, and instead used the title Vakil e- Ra'aayaa (Representative of the People). 3Taj Saltaneh is also known as Zahra Khanoum Tadj es-Saltaneh (1883 - 25 January 1936), Daughter of Nasir Al din Shah Qajar. 3 The start of women’s social movements is rooted in the support and explanatory writings by unconventional characters and writers such as Taj Saltaneh and Bibi Khanoom Estarabadi. Taj Saltaneh was one of the influential and striking female characters of Qajar era. Taj introduced the idea of illiteracy as the main reason for women’s pain and distress, and argued for the necessity of education for women to have better social lives. She was one of Qajar dynasty princesses and the daughter of Naser Al-Din Shah Qajar4. She wrote a memoir book, which is written as a series of candid anecdotes as told to her painting teacher in which she describes her observations. She discusses her viewpoint about gender, women, and the impact of illiteracy in limiting women’s social lives, as well as her opinions about political and social situations. Figure 1Taj Portrait of Saltaneh-Unknown Artist 4 Nassir Al din Shah, was the King of Iran from September 17, 1848 to May 1, 1896 when he was assassinated. 4 In her book, she describes her observations as a harem girl. The following passage describes a “game” in which the Shah would invite the women in his harem to beat each other after dark: One of the games which I was particularly fond of and never missed watching whenever it was played was one invented by my father and called “lights out.” There were a hundred or so gas lamps in the andarun, but the electric lamps was a recent invention and all the royal mansions had been equipped with it. The venue of the game was the White Hall; my father had chosen it because it was large and spacious. Whenever the game was to be played, the ladies would be informed in the afternoon that there would be “lights out” that night. Respectable women and ladies of birth usually demurred, considering it a great loss of dignity for themselves. The others, however, were keenly interested and would begin to play with immense enjoyment. This game, so important, so loved by all, was outwardly a childish pastime. In reality my father had serious objectives in promoting it: first, he wanted to know everything about the inner workings of the harem; second, he wanted to know which ladies were enemies and which were friends. This was the best way for him to find out. The ladies not only failed to catch on to his true intentions at first, but even at the end they had no idea what he was trying to accomplish. On the surface of it, the game seemed to them no more than an imaginative diversion. The game consisted of turning out the lights. In the dark the women had absolute freedom and license to kiss each other, beat each other, bite each other, blind each other, or break each other’ heads and limbs. At the beginning of the game the ladies would all sit in the middle of the hall, talking among themselves, my father would sit on a chair near the light switch. As they were busy in their conversation, he would turn out the 5 light. Suddenly all hell would break loose. Screams, cries for help, oaths, curses and wailing would be heard everywhere. Everyone was up to something. The dignified ones crept into corners or hide under a bench, a table or a chair to find safety. The wild ones doled out and received their beating. Of course, as you know, it is the wicked who form the majority. Amid this pandemonium of kneeing and wailing whose effect was heightened by the absolute darkness -- presenting a bizarre spectacle by the observer, as of a corner in hell in which a thousand perils awaited man -- the lights would suddenly come back on, catching everybody in some act. Usually the clothes would be ripped to shreds, the faces and cheeks bloody, the bodies obscenely exposed; the beating had been so severe that the largest stitch of clothing on anyone was no bigger than a quarter meter. The women’s faces were grotesque, their hair disheveled, their eyes bloodshot and filled with rage.

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