....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.....
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