Degree show DVD

....these are some stills from the DVD I filmed to accompany the installation I made for the degree show last year, produced to reflect the juxtaposition of two worlds experienced by many women living in Iran today, torn between tradition and the modernity of globalization.

I was partly inspired by the book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, written by Azar Nafisi. Nafisi described the time spent in her home, discussing banned books like Nabokov's Lolita, with x-students, as 'a rent in this world leading to another world of tenderness, brightness and beauty' from which she said, 'only eventually we were compelled to return.'

I used the chador, the garment worn by many women in Iran to cover themselves from head to toe, as a symbol of the traditional element of this dichotomy. On discovering that the word chador also means tent, I played with this homophone and made a tent out of chadors to represent the other aspect of these womens lives, the other world of tenderness, brightness and beauty, the safe space......

The performance showed the women clothed in chadors, walk towards the inner tent. On reaching it, they removed them, reavealing clothes just like those worn by many women all over the free world. They then entered the tent and began reading from a persian copy of the banned book Lolita........which was the hardest thing to get a copy of, but came in two parts that have amazing 1960's covers.....

whoopidoo..........at last The Creative Times has been published on issuu.com..........I'm on pages seven and eight of edition1........both pages with my name on.........you can check the link www.issuu.com/thecreativetimes/docs/ or http://www.thecreativetimes.co.uk/ there are five editions in total........I'm not keen on the font that's been used for my name...and it's taken a year to publish so my work is really out of date...but look out for up-to-date work in future issues

I stitched this tent out of chadors, and then embroidered text from Fitzgeralds translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar-Khayyam onto the mesh window and door......

...after i'd shown it in the Degree Show at Oxford Brookes, some of us took our work to the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane.....I wasn't able to project the images onto the tent as I'd wanted.........but had a great space to show the tent, and played the DVD on a monitor....

, above, about, below,

ti

'for in and outs nothing but a magic shadow-show,

play'd in a box whose candle is the sun,

round which we phantom figures come and go'

Omar-Khyyam

I started to make this shadow box for the home project, but came a bit 'unstuck' trying to stick it together (pardon the cheesy pun)......how on earth do you stick polypropylene? it seems that absolutely nothing works................. it's too late for the home project now, but I'm determined to finish this off.......

..I got the two small pieces of work above accepted for the Little Women Exhibition in Hampshire in March to celebrate International Women's day...they had to be small enough to fit into a CD case.......you can check out the website www.myweb.tiscali.co.uk/megwilliams/womenswork/Littlewomen09images.htm

and

the other piece 'The Way They Were' was
shortlisted for the Royal Academy Summer Show, 2009

I used a transparency of some of my husbands relatives in Tehran pre-revolution, it's a bit pixelated but check out the black eyemake up and backcombed hair.......