Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. We begin with a series of shots from an outdoor exhibition on Governors Island right now. Timely, political, educational, and powerful; “Eyes on Iran” is an excellent opportunity to contemplate the values we say that we honor and are willing to fight for. It is also an opportunity for Iranians in New York to speak up regarding the ongoing protests in their home country to clarify what the issues are.
On a cold but sunny December day, it is also gratifying to see such visual eloquence in the public space. From the description: “Amplifying the critical movement of Woman, Life, Freedom, the exhibition ‘Eyes on Iran’ seeks to hold the world’s gaze on the unfolding revolution and human rights abuses in Iran, while continuing to demand effective action. With the installation facing the United Nations, the location of the installation calls for direct accountability required from the U.N and their respective global leaders.”
Artists include Sheida Soleimani, Aphrodite Désirée Navab, Z, Icy and Sot, Shirin Neshat, Mahvash Mostala, Sepideh Mehraban, Shirin Towfiq, JR, and conceptual artist and co-founder of For Freedoms Hank Willis Thomas. We share a few of them here with you.
And following those images we give you a few others from our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Faile, Glare, Short, Bumer, Randy, and Sidk.
Shirin Neshat. A stark black and white photograph of the artist’s eye inscribed with farsi calligraphy with an excerpt from the Iranian female poet Forugh Farrokhzad’s poem “I Pity the Garden”.
Icy and Sot created “Bricks of Revolution” to “represent the strength of the activists who are currently risking their lives, inside and outside prisons, to fight oppression. This installation is an homage to political prisoners and all those paving the way to revolution in Iran.”
Aphrodite Desiree Navab’s installation is appropriately timed with the Winter Solstice. On this night, Shab-e-Yalda, meaning “Night of Birth” in Farsi, Iranian girls tie colorful ribbons to trees, making wishes. As an Iranian-born, NYC-based artist and activist protesting in solidarity with Iranian women, my one wish is for women to live life in freedom. The bandanas are the colors of the Iranian flag -green, white, and red. However, they do not have symbols of either theocracy or monarchy at their center, but instead have one word in Farsi: meaning woman.
