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beardedmrbean · 2 years

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https://www.newsweek.com/iran-votes-execute-protesters-says-rebels-need-hard-lesson-1757931

IR MPs rather kill thousands of their own people than face the music.

That's not a promising looking link or preview there. Going full text on the article so nobody needs to fuss with the paywall, I cheat for those so nbd on my end.

After numerous calls for harsh punishments in recent days, the Iranian parliament on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly in favor of the death penalty for protesters.

Iran has been experiencing unprecedented levels of protests and civil unrest since the death of Mahsa Amini on September 16. The 22-year-old Kurdish woman was arrested by the country's "morality police" for supposedly wearing an "improper" form of hijab during a visit to Tehran and allegedly beaten severely while in custody. The beatings are believed to have led to her death from a fatal head injury, but Iranian authorities have denied the accusation.

In the wake of Amini's death, there have been large-scale nationwide protests the likes of which Iran has not seen in decades. Female protesters have notably taken to burning their hijabs and cutting their hair in public in defiance of the rules imposed by Iran's Islamic government, under the leadership of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iranian lawmakers have, in recent days, called for strict punishments for the protesters who have been arrested. On Monday, CNN reported that a letter signed by 227 members of the Iranian parliament urged that the protesters be given harsh punishment that "would serve as a good lesson in the shortest possible time."

"Now, the public, even protesters who are not supportive of riots, demand from the judiciary and security institutions to deal with the few people who have caused disturbances in a firm, deterrent, and legal manner," Iranian government spokesman Masoud Setayeshi said, according to Reuters.

On Tuesday, parliament did just that, voting to impose the death penalty on all protesters in custody as a "hard lesson" for all rebels. The majority in favor of the penalty was considerable, 227 out of the 290 total members, matching the number of lawmakers who signed the letter.

It is unclear when the executions will be carried out, but the task will potentially be significant. As of Thursday, CNN reported, about 14,000 people had been arrested in connection with the recent protests. On Tuesday, Carnegie Endowment fellow Karim Sadjadpour said the number was nearing 15,000.

"In the last 8 weeks Iran's regime has killed over 300 protestors, imprisoned nearly 15,000, and threatened to execute hundreds more, yet Iran's women persist," Sadjadpour wrote in a tweet. "Today female university students removed their forced hejab and chant, 'I am a free woman.'"

Several prominent figures in Iran are calling for a response from foreign governments.

"Outrageous! After killing 100s of protesters on the streets & a violent crackdown, 227 MPs in Iran called the protesters "Mohareb" & asked the judiciary to issue "retribution" sentences [execution]," journalist Omid Memarian tweeted on Sunday. "The world should respond. Dangerous!"

In response to the parliament vote, activist and journalist Masih Alinejad tweeted: "227 members of the 290-seat Parliament in Iran have called on the Judiciary to issue death sentences for people arrested during the ongoing uprising. They want to execute innocent protesters who chanted Woman Life Freedom. The world must stop this act of terror."

Newsweek reached out to the Iranian government for comment. _________________________

I'd been chatting with a friend a while back about a article I'd run about all the different protests petering out without causing the change they'd wanted or not much of it at least dancing back and forth with the why's on them.

Article had it right in my opinion, governments were mostly just working to contain them and just let them run out of steam like a toddler having a temper tantrum. (my short version)

Places where they hung on the longest all seemed to have one thing in common, heavy handed response from law enforcement or some other group of that type, Belarus had the military out for example.

Once they backed off of beating down and injuring the protesters they eventually just wandered back home, for the most part from what I've seen and recall at least.

Even in Iran the first time round a couple years back after they shot down a passenger jet full of civilians.

Iran's regime is fucked now, even worse if they go through with this.

Persecution will likely harden the resolve of the protesters, be one of the ways Christianity took hold so well, that and they execute a massive number of people international community may finally get more involved.

#anonymous

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melikemordemjaponi · 2 years

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＊Her name is ⁦‪Zoha Abdi,a pharmacy student at Isfahan University. On Wednesday, she helped a student injured during protests, took him to the Family Hospital (her workplace) & treated him. Shortly after, she was arrested by plainclothes forces. ⁦‪‬⁩ ⁧

Via Twitter Omid Memarian(+photo)

＊Onun ismi Zoha Abdi, İsfahan Üniversitesi'nde eczacılık öğrencisi. Çarşamba günü, protestolar sırasında yaralanan bir öğrenciye yardım etti, onu Aile Hastanesine (işyeri) götürdü ve tedavi etti. Kısa bir süre sonra sivil polisler tarafından tutuklandı.

Twitter/Omid Memarian aracılığıyla (+foto)

＊彼女の名前はゾハ・アブディ,イラン・イスファハン大学の薬学部の学生｡水曜日に彼女は抗議行動で負傷した学生を助け､彼女の職場である家族病院に連れて行き､治療を施した｡その直後、彼女は私服警官に逮捕された。

Twitter/オミド・メマリアンさんより(+画像とも)

#mahsa amini #jin jiyan azadi #woman life freedom #iran #iran protests #iran revolution #iran news #human rights #politics

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claryjennifer · 2 years

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We hear you. We see you.

To the women of Iran, always. One of the best commentaries about what “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi,” [Woman, Life, Liberty] mean, by @AliVelshi. He ends the segment with this message to the Iranian women: “You are not voiceless; we hear you, we see you.” A must watch!#MahsaAmini #مهسا_امینی #IranProtests pic.twitter.com/gnDyNAUjfV — Omid Memarian (@Omid_M) October 18, 2022

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#iran

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phroyd · 5 years

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Iran is experiencing its deadliest political unrest since the Islamic Revolution 40 years ago, with at least 180 people killed — and possibly hundreds more — as angry protests have been smothered in a government crackdown of unbridled force.

It began two weeks ago with an abrupt increase of at least 50 percent in gasoline prices. Within 72 hours, outraged demonstrators in cities large and small were calling for an end to the Islamic Republic’s government and the downfall of its leaders.

In many places, security forces responded by opening fire on unarmed protesters, largely unemployed or low-income young men between the ages of 19 and 26, according to witness accounts and videos. In the southwest city of Mahshahr alone, witnesses and medical personnel said, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps members surrounded, shot and killed 40 to 100 demonstrators — mostly unarmed young men — in a marsh where they had sought refuge.

“The recent use of lethal force against people throughout the country is unprecedented, even for the Islamic Republic and its record of violence,” said Omid Memarian, the deputy director at the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based group.

Altogether, from 180 to 450 people, and possibly more, were killed in four days of intense violence after the gasoline price increase was announced on Nov. 15, with at least 2,000 wounded and 7,000 detained, according to international rights organizations, opposition groups and local journalists.

The last enormous wave of protests in Iran — in 2009 after a contested election, which was also met with a deadly crackdown — left 72 people dead over a much longer period of about 10 months.

Only now, nearly two weeks after the protests were crushed — and largely obscured by an internet blackout in the country that was lifted recently — have details corroborating the scope of killings and destruction started to dribble out.

The latest outbursts not only revealed staggering levels of frustration with Iran’s leaders, but also underscored the serious economic and political challenges facing them, from the Trump administration’s onerous sanctions on the country to the growing resentment toward Iran by neighbors in an increasingly unstable Middle East.

The gas price increase, which was announced as most Iranians had gone to bed, came as Iran is struggling to fill a yawning budget gap. The Trump administration sanctions, mostly notably their tight restrictions on exports of Iran’s oil, are a big reason for the shortfall. The sanctions are meant to pressure Iran into renegotiating the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and major world powers, which President Trump abandoned, calling it too weak.

Most of the nationwide unrest seemed concentrated in neighborhoods and cities populated by low-income and working-class families, suggesting this was an uprising born in the historically loyal power base of Iran’s post-revolutionary hierarchy.

Many Iranians, stupefied and embittered, have directed their hostility directly at the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who called the crackdown a justified response to a plot by Iran’s enemies at home and abroad.

The killings prompted a provocative warning from Mir Hussein Moussavi, an opposition leader and former presidential candidate whose 2009 election loss set off peaceful demonstrations that Ayatollah Khamenei also suppressed by force.

In a statement posted Saturday on an opposition website, Mr. Moussavi, who has been under house arrest since 2011 and seldom speaks publicly, blamed the supreme leader for the killings. He compared them to an infamous 1978 massacre by government forces that led to the downfall of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi a year later, at the hands of the Islamic revolutionaries who now rule the country.

“The killers of the year 1978 were the representatives of a nonreligious regime and the agents and shooters of November 2019 are the representatives of a religious government,” he said. “Then the commander in chief was the shah and today, here, the supreme leader with absolute authority.”

The authorities have declined to specify casualties and arrests and have denounced unofficial figures on the national death toll as speculative. But the nation’s interior minister, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, has cited widespread unrest around the country.

On state media, he said that protests had erupted in 29 out of 31 provinces and 50 military bases had been attacked, which if true suggested a level of coordination absent in the earlier protests. The property damage also included 731 banks, 140 public spaces, nine religious centers, 70 gasoline stations, 307 vehicles, 183 police cars, 1,076 motorcycles and 34 ambulances, the interior minister said.

The worst violence documented so far happened in the city of Mahshahr and its suburbs, with a population of 120,000 people in Iran’s southwest Khuzestan Province — a region with an ethnic Arab majority that has a long history of unrest and opposition to the central government. Mahshahr is adjacent to the nation’s largest industrial petrochemical complex and serves as a gateway to Bandar Imam, a major port.

The New York Times interviewed six residents of the city, including a protest leader who had witnessed the violence; a reporter based in the city who works for Iranian media, and had investigated the violence but was banned from reporting it; and a nurse at the hospital where casualties were treated.

They each provided similar accounts of how the Revolutionary Guards deployed a large force to Mahshahr on Monday, Nov. 18, to crush the protests. All spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by the Guards.

For three days, according to these residents, protesters had successfully gained control of most of Mahshahr and its suburbs, blocking the main road to the city and the adjacent industrial petrochemical complex. Iran’s interior minister confirmed that the protesters had gotten control over Mahshahr and its roads in a televised interview last week, but the Iranian government did not respond to specific questions in recent days about the mass killings in the city.

Local security forces and riot police officers had attempted to disperse the crowd and open the roads, but failed, residents said. Several clashes between protesters and security forces erupted between Saturday evening and Monday morning before the Guards were dispatched there.

When the Guards arrived near the entrance to a suburb, Shahrak Chamran, populated by low-income members of Iran’s ethnic Arab minority, they immediately shot without warning at dozens of men blocking the intersection, killing several on the spot, according to the residents interviewed by phone.

The residents said the other protesters scrambled to a nearby marsh, and that one of them, apparently armed with an AK-47, fired back. The Guards immediately encircled the men and responded with machine gun fire, killing as many as 100 people, the residents said.

The Guards piled the dead onto the back of a truck and departed, the residents said, and relatives of the wounded then transported them to Memko Hospital.

One of the residents, a 24-year-old unemployed college graduate in chemistry who had helped organize the protests blocking the roads, said he had been less than a mile away from the mass shooting and that his best friend, also 24, and a 32-year-old cousin were among the dead.

He said they both had been shot in the chest and their bodies were returned to the families five days later, only after they had signed paperwork promising not to hold funerals or memorial services and not to give interviews to media.

The young protest organizer said he, too, was shot in the ribs on Nov. 19, the day after the mass shooting, when the Guards stormed with tanks into his neighborhood, Shahrak Taleghani, among the poorest suburbs of Mahshahr.

He said a gun battle erupted for hours between the Guards and ethnic Arab residents, who traditionally keep guns for hunting at home. Iranian state media and witnesses reported that a senior Guards commander had been killed in a Mahshahr clash. Video on Twitter suggests tanks had been deployed there.

A 32-year-old nurse in Mahshahr reached by the phone said she had tended to the wounded at the hospital and that most had sustained gunshot wounds to the head and chest.

She described chaotic scenes at the hospital, with families rushing to bring in the casualties, including a 21 year old who was to be married but could not be saved. “‘Give me back my son!,’” the nurse quoted his sobbing mother as saying. “‘It’s his wedding in two weeks!’”

The nurse said security forces stationed at the hospital arrested some of the wounded protesters after their conditions had stabilized. She said some relatives, fearing arrest themselves, dropped wounded love ones at the hospital and fled, covering their faces.

On Nov. 25, a week after it happened, the city’s representative in Parliament, Mohamad Golmordai, vented outrage in a blunt moment of searing antigovernment criticism that was broadcast on Iranian state television and captured in photos and videos uploaded to the internet.

“What have you done that the undignified Shah did not do?” Mr. Golmordai screamed from the Parliament floor, as a scuffle broke out between him and other lawmakers, including one who grabbed him by the throat.

The local reporter in Mahshahr said the total number of people killed in three days of unrest in the area had reached 130, including those killed in the marsh.

“This regime has pushed people toward violence,” said Yousef Alsarkhi, 29, a political activist from Khuzestan who migrated to the Netherlands four years ago. “The more they repress, the more aggressive and angry people get.”

Political analysts said the protests appeared to have delivered a severe blow to President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate in Iran’s political spectrum, all but guaranteeing that hard-liners would win upcoming parliamentary elections and the presidency in two years.

The tough response to the protests also appeared to signal a hardening rift between Iran’s leaders and sizable segments of the population of 83 million.

“The government’s response was uncompromising, brutal and rapid,” said Henry Rome, an Iran analyst at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy in Washington. Still, he said, the protests also had “demonstrated that many Iranians are not afraid to take to the streets.”

Phroyd

#iran #violence #oppression #theocracy

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thenetionalnews · 2 years

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Protests Triggered by Rising Food Prices Spread in Iran

As thousands of Iranians, already fed up with inflation and unemployment, took to the streets this week, their protests quickly moved from airing their food grievances to their discontent with the ruling establishment. “They have no hope, they have no trust in the government and they can’t tolerate the status quo any more,” said Omid Memarian, an Iran expert at Democracy for the Arab World Now, a…

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letsjanukhan · 2 years

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Protests Triggered by Rising Food Prices Spread in Iran

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khalilhumam · 4 years

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‘Shadow Means Strength, Shadow is Invincible': A conversation with Turkish artist Selma Gurbuz

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/shadow-means-strength-shadow-is-invincible-a-conversation-with-turkish-artist-selma-gurbuz/

‘Shadow Means Strength, Shadow is Invincible': A conversation with Turkish artist Selma Gurbuz

Forest. Full Moon. ink on hand made paper, 155x300cm, 2012

Turkish artist Selma Gürbüz is fascinated with shadows. “Shadow is strength. Shadow is invincible. Nothing can overpower the shadow. Shadows follow you; they change,” said Gürbüz in an interview with Global Voices. Gürbüz was born in 1960 in Istanbul, where she currently works. She graduated from Marmara University Faculty of Fine Arts in 1984 following two years at Exeter College of Art Design. Since her first exhibition in 1986, Gürbüz has been part of numerous solo and group exhibitions in both in Turkey and abroad. Gürbüz's works create worlds from imaginary creatures, ghosts, and threads drawn from The 1001 Nights, and draw inspiration from history. While her works might seem disconnected from the outside world or current events, they are fundamentally concerned with issues such as race, women, love, identity, and nature. Excerpts from the interview follow. Omid Memarian: How do you see the current position of Turkish contemporary art in the broader global scene? Have art events such as the Istanbul Biennale boosted the visibility of local artists? Selma Gürbüz: Economic and political instability in Turkey have long affected the local art world. Collectors’ interest has slightly declined compared to previous years. However, I see this as temporary. A number of our important artists continue to produce works that make waves in the global art world. So, the interest that was shown in the works of Turkish artists both nationally and internationally remains. The Istanbul Biennale is one of the most important such events anywhere in the world. Arter, a non-profit initiative that brings together artists and audiences in celebration of today’s art in all its forms and disciplines, relocated to a new venue last year. This new space boasts 18,000 square meters of indoor area and houses, exhibition galleries, terrace, performance halls, learning areas, library, conservation laboratory, arts bookstore, and a café. The Odunpazarı Modern Museum opened in the city of Eskişehir. The Istanbul Modern Museum will soon move to a new, much larger building. There is no doubt that all these developments will greatly benefit the visibility and production of contemporary art within Turkey. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a considerable impact on the art world, internationally and within Turkey. International organizations will continue to be adversely affected, including through the impact on international travel, and therefore I think it is important that countries show more support and take an interest in their own artists, helping them to overcome these difficulties. The art markets will localize for a few years and this, in turn, will give a different kind of motivation to artists.

Maybe you feel like it, oil on canvas, 155x230cm. 2016

OM: The color black is dominant in many of your works. You have even been called “the painter of black magic, black crows, black people, fairies and eyes.” What's your connection to this color? SG: Black, for me, is fundamentally, shadow. In life, I've always enjoyed looking at shadows. My discovery of shadows is influenced not only by my interest in the shadow theater of my own country but also of the Far East, such as China, Japan, and Indonesia. Some of these shadow plays are quite vocal in their political discourse. My first piece of shadow theater was an installation I prepared for the Kuandu Biennale in Taiwan. The papier mâché figures I created moved among themselves and I projected their reflection onto the wall. As well as their own movements, they threw black shadows onto the walls. Their movements transformed into an erotic theater piece. Later, I prepared other shadow plays for an exhibition of mine in Yokohama in Japan. In these plays I was also there within the shadows. It was a difficult piece. I was in front of the curtain this time, with the shadow puppets in my hands. They were animal puppets, roosters, ravens and suchlike. Along with my puppets, I entered into a performance that resembled a battle, an actual physical fight. It turned into a play in which the ostensible struggle was between such emotions as jealousy, passion, and vulnerability. In time, these black shadows made it into my paintings. Shadow means strength. Shadow is invincible. Nothing can overpower shadow. Shadows follow you; they change. Along with the movement of light itself, the position and form of shadow also changes. Shadow can change the shape of an object. Shadow lends length. That which is real does not change, but its shadow can change. Shadow is a two-dimensional representation. It shows us ourselves.

Woman with Roosters, oil on canvas, 155x230cm. 2011

OM: Women have a very strong presence in many of your works. What type of women do you speak about in your works, and what do they mean to you? SG: I usually portray myself in my depictions of the figures of women in my paintings. The vulnerability, courage, caprices, and smiles of my female figures are reflections of my own feelings. They are the innocent figures of an undefined time. They are vulnerable. They are flirty. Instead of being in dialogue with the viewer, the viewer can instead form a strange closeness with them. They are mystical and naïve while also being courageous and intelligent. They have been trained in the ways of both the east and the west. Each one has a different story in my world. And I'm not talking here about a story as a product of fiction. These, instead, are stories that play out in an impromptu fashion; stories that have broken through into the free movement of the imagination. Every story gives birth to a new one and they all have this element of discipline and sustainability. For them, nature is extremely important, they feel the yearning for nature. They miss nature. These women see nature in its tiniest details, they study it, paint it, and wish to be consumed by it: to be lost in nature. It is this courage that gives them the power to be free.

Dance in the Forest, Ink on handmade paper, 61×118 1/10 in, 2013.

OM: Many of your paintings look like the work of a storyteller. How do you develop your stories and how do they end up as paintings? SG: It starts with a mental picture. Then I ponder on which images I can use to compose that vision within a painting, and the kind of dramatic effect it will have. I have often felt that people who look at my paintings can read them like a story and that I have somehow enabled them to do so. But we have to distinguish here between this kind of storytelling and the compositional coherence of a literary author and the written tales that they build up through their layers, the gradation that takes place from start to finish as they compose drafts, erase, and rewrite. In my creative process, the continuation of a spontaneous flow is clearly visible. I open up the doors to impromptu creation. There is nothing in my pictures that I cover up with something else. For example, I'd never say, “this part hasn't turned out quite as I'd have liked, so I'll change the paper.” Whatever I do is represented there. This is an idiosyncrasy that makes me, me. But at the same time, this can be a drag. The process requires the highest degree of concentration. What's more, I have to know from the outset exactly what I want. Then again, that's not to say that I will sit in front of a painting having toiled and performed every calculation. I like to leave myself to be free. My free form associations can cause the painting to flow in a new direction. And I feel it's these surprises that make a painting a painting. OM: Do current events impact your work and creativity? SG: I don't make political paintings. I don't sit in front of a piece of work and feel the pressure of daily politics. The themes of the paintings, the subjects and contents are separate and are not influenced by everyday events in life or current developments. And therefore I can't really say that I feel subject to a definite effect coming directly from that context. However, I am affected indirectly, there's no doubt. And not only as an artist, I am affected first and foremost as a person. The disappointments I suffer in the outside world due to events that occur tend to turn me deeper into my own inner world. This is not a form of submission but can be better thought of as a stronger impulse to bring out the artistic powers. I say that I do not get directly affected, and then I suddenly remember a painting I made some three years ago. In the name of defending the rights and freedoms of those people who are oppressed in so many places in the world I painted a Statue of Freedom. The Statue of Freedom was only symbolic here of course. And to look at that painting again now in light of what is currently happening in the United States gives rise to new readings of it in totally new contexts and I personally find that very interesting.

Left: Ad Gloriam, ink on hand made paper, 220×120 cm. 2016. Middle: “Faced with Myself”, Archival Pigment Print 17/30 ed., 83x42cm,2012. Right: Serpentine. ink on hand made paper, 240x122cm, 2011.

OM: You were born, grew up, and live in Istanbul, Turkey, a country with a rich history and culture. How can one explore references to your roots and cultural identity in your works? SG: Istanbul was the capital city of three huge empires: the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires. It has a vast, rich, history and culture that very few other world cities can challenge. Istanbul's rich identity results from a synthesis of “east” and “west”. When you take a walk on the historical peninsula of Istanbul you can see Ottoman miniatures, Byzantine mosaics, historical mosques and churches all of which are hundreds of years old, in just one day. Being born and brought up in a city such as this has had very direct effects on my art. For example, the Ottoman hunting miniatures or the paintings of Byzantine saints are only a few of the subjects I have portrayed. At the same time, the lands of Anatolia, which countless civilizations have made their home throughout history, are a place of incredibly rich mythology. Some of the references I go back to frequently for my paintings are those such as Kybele, the goddess figure whose roots we find in the Hittite and Phrygian civilizations. In addition to this, I love to return to universal myths, such as those of Adam and Eve or Medusa. I always find that I discover new points of view, new aspects, every time I go back to them.

Night. Sleeping Beauties. ink on hand made paper, 155x300cm, 2011

OM: What are you working on now and when we will see a new body of work? Will your new body of work be the continuation of your previous work? SG: Two years ago I visited Tanzania with my friend Burak Acar. We went on safari in the Serengeti and took videos and photographs for a whole week. Africa opened new doors of inspiration to me. I've been working in Africa for a very long time. In November 2020 I will launch my new solo exhibition at the Istanbul Modern. In the exhibition my paintings and sculptures inspired by Africa will be exhibited. Alongside these we'll be setting up various video installations showing the films that we took whilst in the Serengeti. At the moment I am directing a team and we're working to get it all ready. I am really excited about this.

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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With Brutal Crackdown, Iran Convulsed by Worst Unrest in 40 Years https://nyti.ms/2Yd2bUM

With Brutal Crackdown, Iran Convulsed by Worst Unrest in 40 Years

What started as a protest over a surprise increase in gasoline prices turned into widespread demonstrations met with a systematic repression that left at least 180 people dead.

By Farnaz Fassihi and Rick Gladstone | Published Dec. 1, 2019, 2:28 PM ET | New York Times | Posted Dec. I, 2019 |

The last enormous wave of protests in Iran — in 2009 after a contested election, which was also met with a deadly crackdown — left 72 people dead over a much longer period of about 10 months.

When the Guards arrived near the entrance to a suburb, Shahrak Chamran, populated by low-income ethnic Arabs, they immediately shot without warning at dozens of men blocking the intersection, killing several on the spot, according to the residents interviewed by phone.

The Guards piled the dead onto the back of a truck and departed, the residents said, and relatives of the wounded then transported them to Memko Hospital.

A 32-year-old nurse in Mahshahr reached by the phone said she had tended to the wounded at the hospital and that most had sustained gunshot wounds to the head and chest.

The local reporter in Mahshahr said the total number of people killed in three days of unrest in the area had reached 130, including those killed in the marsh.

The tough response to the protests also appeared to signal a hardening rift between Iran’s leaders and sizable segments of the population of 83 million.

#u.s. news #worldpolitics #world news #worldtraveler #middle east #middleeast #iran news #iran #us iran #sanctions against iran #iraq news #iraq #international news

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opeedes · 5 years

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RT @Omid_M: لئوناردو دی‌کاپریو با توییتی با اشاره به دستگیری‌ حافظان محیط زیست در ایران گفته «ما باید در کنار کسانی که زندگی خودشان را برای حفاظت از اینده زمین و ساکنان آن به خطر می‌اندازند ، بایستیم. او در ضمن لینک به صفحه درخواست جمع آوری امضا برای آزادی این افراد را هم توییت کرده است. https://t.co/53pbUOQtrf

لئوناردو دی‌کاپریو با توییتی با اشاره به دستگیری‌ حافظان محیط زیست در ایران گفته «ما باید در کنار کسانی که زندگی خودشان را برای حفاظت از اینده زمین و ساکنان آن به خطر می‌اندازند ، بایستیم. او در ضمن لینک به صفحه درخواست جمع آوری امضا برای آزادی این افراد را هم توییت کرده است. https://t.co/53pbUOQtrf

— Omid Memarian (@Omid_M) February 6, 2019

Tweeted by https://twitter.com/haqaliz if you want to check tweet, here you are :)

http://twitter.com/haqaliz/status/1093242186748084226

February 06, 2019 at 11:47PM

#Peedes #February 06 #2019 at 11:47PM

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romeyramshey · 6 years

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THE UNEXPECTED FALLOUT OF IRAN’S TELEGRAM BAN

SEVEN WEEKS AFTER Iran’s conservative-led judiciary banned the secure communications app Telegram inside the country, Iranians are still reeling from the change. Though Telegram has critics in the security community, it has become wildly popular in Iran over the last few years as a way of communicating, sharing photos and documents, and even doing business. The service is streamlined for mobile devices, and its end-to-end encryption stymies the Iranian government’s digital surveillance and censorship regime. If the government can’t see what you’re talking about and doing, it can’t block or ban behavior it doesn’t like. Telegram’s defenses, combined with robust support for Farsi, have attracted 40 million active Iranian users—nearly half the country’s population. \\\\\\\AD

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On Tuesday, the Center for Human Rights in Iran published a detailed report on the profound impact of blocking Telegram, based on dozens of firsthand accounts from inside the country. Researchers found that the ban has had broad effects, hindering and chilling individual speech, forcing political campaigns to turn to state-sponsored media tools, limiting journalists and activists, curtailing international interactions, and eroding businesses that grew their infrastructure and reach off of Telegram.

The report found that many Iranians continue to use the service through circumvention tools, namely VPNs. Iranians tend to be familiar with and adept at using these options, because they also rely on them to access other blocked online services like Facebook. But the Iranian government’s technological capabilities have evolved as well, making it increasingly difficult to maintain usable access to Telegram.

“The only channel of communication that was unfiltered was Telegram. For many Iranians the internet is Telegram and Telegram is the internet,” says Omid Memarian, deputy director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran. “It was like a huge hole in the country’s wall of censorship, so our expectation was that sooner or later they would block that hole.”////////AD free advertising websites\\\\\\\\\\

‘For many Iranians the internet is Telegram and Telegram is the internet.’

OMID MEMARIAN, CENTER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRAN

Based in Dubai, Telegram has publicly resisted Iranian government efforts to force it to comply with censorship demands. As Iran has tightened its technological stranglehold on content availability, hardline conservatives within the Iranian government have increasingly blamed Telegram for mounting unrest and resentment toward the regime. Officials blocked Telegram briefly in December 2017 amid widespread street protests over government corruption and unemployment.

“Foreign messaging networks should comply with the policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran and should not publish immoral material,” Abolhassan Firouzabadi, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme Cyberspace Council said in November. “If they cooperate with us, there won’t be any problem. Otherwise, we will move towards introducing restrictions against them.”

The recent, long term ban was mandated by Iran’s judiciary, and wasn’t initiated by the government departments that typically oversee technology and censorship policy. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani even criticized the ban publicly in May a few days after it went into effect. It moved forward anyway.

The researchers found that the ban immediately impacted personal communications and businesses—like advertising and marketing groups—run through Telegram with few comparable communication services to take its place. Even the government itself relies on Telegram to function smoothly.

“Email is not widely used. But with Telegram, email has become irrelevant,” says Ahmed, a government employee interviewed for the research. “We send files, reports, letters and office communications through Telegram. When Telegram was blocked in January, it created serious problems for us. Sometimes the ministerial offices could not send letters because of problems with installing circumvention tools.”//////AD free local advertising\\\\\\\

Because Telegram subsumes so many web functions, Iranians have actively fought to stay on it. “What we are seeing is even after the ban, using of Telegram has not dropped off as much as you would think,” says Amir Rashidi, an internet security and digital rights researcher at the Center for Human Rights in Iran. “The government has blocked some circumvention tools, and not everyone has access to them, but Telegram is still operating in Iran. The ban has not been fully successful yet.”

‘The government paid a large price by losing the trust of people who used to be considered their supporters.’

OMID MEMARIAN

Iran’s educated middle class and its more affluent citizens have long had at least sporadic access to circumvention tools for defeating the country’s censorship regime. So the government’s information-control initiatives have generally been more successful with disenfranchised groups. But Memarian points out that this population—typically a reliable base for conservative Iranian leaders—was actually fueling the protests in December. And he adds that blocking Telegram, a move meant to limit this population’s access to organizing tools, seems to be having effects the Iranian government did not intend.

“Prior to banning Telegram, the people who could feel the lack of free expression and sense the lack of freedom in general were from the educated middle class, from the civil society—a relatively small group,” Memarian said. “But now for the first time someone had to block something from 40 million people, so people who had no idea what it means to lose your freedom online, they got it. The government paid a large price by losing the trust of people who used to be considered their supporters.”

Though the government ban hasn’t actually eliminated Telegram from Iran and, if anything, has fueled government opposition, the move to block it and the judiciary’s ability to quickly initiate this plan indicates consolidated power and a unified approach within the government. “There is a perception that the government in Iran is a moderate government. Over the past few years the president has made a few remarks that people should have access to the internet and on a few occasions the government has actually prevented the blocking of messaging apps,” Memarian says. “But our research shows that there’s a consensus on blocking Telegram, it seems that it’s one of the major policies within the state. So that perception that it’s a moderate government is wrong.”

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melikemordemjaponi · 2 years

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＊Sherwin Hajipour'un "Baraye" adlı şarkısı bu kez ⁦‪Coldplay‬⁩ konserinde yankılanmış. İranlı sinema oyuncusu, aktivist ve şarkıcı Gülşifte Ferahani’in eşlik etmesiyle oluşan atmosfer görülmeye değer.

Twitter/Mamoste Ferhat Tunç aracılığıyla +video Omid Memarian

＊Shervin Hajipour's song "Baraye" echoed this time at a Coldplay concert. Accompanied by Iranian film actress, activist and singer Golshifteh Farahani , the atmosphere was spectacular.

Via Twitter/Mr.Ferhat Tunç +video Mr.Omid Memarian

＊イランの歌手シェルヴィン・ハジプール氏がマフサ・アミニさんへの蛮行に抗議して作った歌”Baraye”が、今度は世界的に有名なアーティスト/コールドプレイのコンサートで響いた。イランの映画女優-活動家-歌手であるゴルシフテ・ファラハニ氏を伴い､会場は厳かな雰囲気に包まれた｡

Twitter/フェルハト・トゥンチさん+動画提供-オミド・メマリアンさんより

#mahsa amini #jina amini #jin jiyan azadi #woman life freedom #kurdi #kurds #kurdish #kurdistan #iran revolution #iran #iran protests #iran news #coldplay #concert #golshifteh farahani

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khalilhumam · 4 years

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Through the Orientalist looking-glass: An interview with Moroccan artist Lalla Essaydi

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Through the Orientalist looking-glass: An interview with Moroccan artist Lalla Essaydi

Lalla Essaydi, Harem #2, 2009. 71 × 88 in 180.4 × 223.5 cm.

Moroccan artist Lalla Essaydi, 64, is well known for her dazzling, multidimensional staged photographs, which in spite of their simplicity, masterfully capture and challenge the complexities of social structures, women's identities and cultural traditions. Essaydi‘s artworks not only reinvent visual traditions; they also “invoke the western fascination with the odalisque, the veil, and, of course, the harem, as expressed in Orientalist painting.” “My work speaks primarily in terms of Moroccan identity, but visual identifiers such as the veil, harem, ornate ornamentation, and sumptuous color also resonate with other regions in the Muslim and Arabic worlds where the place of women has historically been marked by limited expression and constrained individuality,” Essaydi said in an interview with Global Voices. Raised in Morocco, Essaydi has lived in Saudi Arabia and France and is currently based in Boston. She has exhibited at the National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., the Art Institute of Chicago, the Fries Museum in the Netherlands, among others. Essaydi is a poet of architecture, the female body, and color. Where letters overwhelm her composition, the bold presence of women and the veiled apprehension in their eyes disrupt all equations of beauty. Excerpts from the interview follow.

Moroccan artist, Lalla Essaydi. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Omid Memarian: Over the past two decades you have been creating striking artworks that conceptually challenge social structures and comment on power and authority. How did you find and develop this visual language? Laila Essaydi: My approach to art in general, and my relation to Islamic art in particular, is deeply rooted in my personal experience. As a Moroccan-born artist who has lived in New York, Boston, and Marrakesh and who travels frequently to the Arab world, I have become deeply aware of how the cultures of the “Orient” and “Occident” view one another. In particular, I have become increasingly aware of the impact of the Western gaze on Arab culture. Although Orientalism most often suggests a 19th-century European vision of the East, as a set of assumptions it lives on today: both in the gaze of the West and in the way Arab societies continue to internalize and respond to that gaze. In its early form, Orientalism was a literal “vision,” finding expression in the work of Western painters who traveled to the “exotic” East in search of cultures more colorful than their own, I have used it as a point of departure in much of my own work—in both painting and photography. The imagery I found in Orientalist painting has resonated with me in tricky ways and ultimately helped me situate my own experience in a powerful visual language. In my photography, I explore this space, whether mental or physical, and interrogate its role in gender identity-making, while engaging with centuries of cultural heritage and artistic practices. For instance, my images of women, embedded in Islamic architecture, recognize and represent an alternative to similar spaces, as imagined for women, in painting and photography, from within the Arab and Muslim worlds. My fusion of calligraphy (a sacred art traditionally reserved for men) and henna (an adornment worn and applied only by women) similarly reproduces artistic traditions and practices common in everyday life in Islamic cultures while transgressing gender roles and the boundaries between private and public spaces.

Lalla Essaydi, Harem #1, 2009

OM: You were born and raised in Morocco, spent 19 years in Saudi Arabia, moved to Paris and studied there and finally landed in the U.S., studied, and lived there. How has this geographical path impacted your art, your perception of women, and their presence in your photos? LE: My work is inspired by personal history. The many territories that converge in my work are not only geographical ones but territories of the imagination, shaped, above all, by childhood and memory—by these invisible influences. My work cannot be reduced to Orientalist discourse. Orientalism has given me a lens through which to focus on the converging territories of my work and through which to see more clearly the influence of Western imagination in the Eastern ways of conceptualizing the self. At a more personal level, my creative practice is a means through which I can reinvent and position myself in different times and cultural contexts. At the same time, I also celebrate the cultural richness of Morocco, the Middle East and North African countries. Although I tend to think of my work as, first and foremost, being about the experience of women, I would say that these elements are also significant. They do not happen incidentally but are part of the inherent qualities that I bring to my vision and my work.

Lalla Essaydi, Bullets Revisited #37, 2014.

OM: How did earning a BFA and MFA from Tufts University and the School of Museum of Fine Art contribute to your career and artistic transformation? Was the education something you expected? LE: I enrolled in the Museum School because I wanted to return to Morocco and be able to pursue my hobby with greater knowledge and skill. Instead, I found my life’s work. I learned that some of the most important things in our lives happen unexpectedly. We take a class in painting and discover an entire new world at our fingertips: waiting to be grasped. We take a class in painting and find art history, and installation, photography and so much more. We look for a glass of water and find an ocean, calling to us. And we answer the call. I never dreamed I would spend seven years in this environment, immersing myself in everything the School had to offer, and learning more than I had ever imagined was possible. This was, and is, a school of artists, designed by and for artists: where students are free to choose what they want to learn. It only offers elective modules, and there are no mandatory classes. When we realize the riches that are available, we want to absorb everything. At first I was overwhelmed. I was one of those students who roamed the corridors of the School late at night, peering into the empty rooms, with their silent trappings of whatever medium was taught there. Eventually, the School taught me a second lesson. With all these opportunities and this great array of artistic riches, with this enormous freedom to choose, comes responsibility. Responsibility first means discipline, and setting priorities, followed by learning new skills and techniques. And then comes self-direction, as we learn and understand new ways of thinking about art, and the ambition to do something important with our lives. My career offered me something else, something I did not expect. This very public environment offered me a private space, something I had never had at home. It offered me a space where I was free to express my thoughts in private, without the inhibiting knowledge that they were available for all to see. This enabled me to explore and bring to the fore aspects of my own interior life I hadn’t even known were there. While I knew that creating art is an intensely personal experience, I also learned that it happens only with the help of a lot of gifted and dedicated people: people who teach and guide, people who encourage and nurture, people who inspire you to keep reaching to create what is excellent and beautiful and true. You can tell, I loved the School.

Lalla Essaydi. Les Femmes du Maroc: La Grande Odalisque, 2008

OM: Women and their private space in the Arab world are central to your series “Harem” and other work. Where did this curiosity and focus come from and sow has it changed over time? LE: My work reaches beyond Islamic culture as it also invokes the Western fascination with the odalisque, the veil, and, of course, the harem as it is expressed in Orientalist painting. Orientalism has long been a source of fascination for me. My background in art is in painting, and it is as a painter that I began my investigation into Orientalism. My study led me to a much deeper understanding of the painting space so beautifully addressed by Orientalist painters in thrall to Arab décor. From its terrific prominence in these paintings, this décor made me keenly aware of the importance of interior space in Arab/Islamic culture. And finally, of course, I became aware of the patterns of cultural domination and predatory sexual fantasy encoded in Orientalist painting. Memarian: Your artworks incorporate multiple layers, a beautiful and colorful layer on the outside, and inviting mixed layers of calligraphy, henna, ceramic, and also models. The latter rests on the edge of cliché, but it also creates a lively and mystical visual labyrinth. What is it like to navigate this fine line? Essaydi: It is important for me that my work be beautiful. While it is received very differently in Western and Arab contexts, its aesthetic is appreciated in both. More critical for me, however, is that the photographs achieve a balance between their political, historical and aesthetic content, as well as make a statement on art. But the fact that I have sometimes been critiqued for, on the one hand, perpetuating expectations and stereotypes rather than refuting them and, on the other, for exposing that which should remain private, indicates that responses to my work are highly subjective, context-specific and likely culturally informed. Tempered by the ambiguity of the work’s literal meaning, perhaps defaulting to the most accessible and intuitive reaction: perception of the stereotype. Nevertheless, with deliberate subtlety, my work introduces alternative, challenging perspectives on canonical 19th-century Orientalist paintings. As a female artist from the regions depicted, mine is an historically repressed voice that “complicates any neat framing of the canon.” Drawing on similar visual devices, I try to engage it in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable dialogue, and re-situates the Orientalist genre in the history of art.

Harem Revisited #34, 2012

OM: In a 2012 interview you said that your models “see themselves as part of a small feminist movement.” While “freedom” is one of your main concerns, and many of your works seem to reconstruct traditions, how does this contradictory formula have such a liberating result? LE: My work may seem to “reconstruct traditions,” but in fact I am trying to create a new understanding. The liberating result comes because in many ways, performance is an intrinsic element of my photographs, evident in the figures’ careful composition, in the physical act of writing and, more importantly, in the intensity of the sitters’ embodied presence that also renders them subjects rather than objects. Through writing, I lay bare personal thoughts, memory, and experiences that belong to me and the women featured as individuals within a broader narrative. Though my work speaks primarily in terms of Moroccan identity, visual identifiers such as the veil, harem, ornate ornamentation, and sumptuous color also resonate with other regions in the Muslim and Arabic worlds where the place of women has historically been marked by limited expression and constrained individuality. While my work evokes the region’s traditional aesthetics and social practices, I insert a dimension that complicates them: a personal narrative that takes form in the written word. In volumes upon volumes of text, these women voice critical reflections on and interrogations of memories, all captured within the space of my photographs. At the same time, I write about historical representations of Moroccan, Arabic, Muslim, and African women. To understand my work, then, one must examine long-standing preconceptions held by diverse peoples over time, as well as by myself.

Lalla Essaydi, Bullets, Jackson Fine Art. February 3 – April 15, 2017

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khalilhumam · 4 years

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‘African art has nourished all civilizations': A Conversation with Algerian artist Rachid Koraichi

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‘African art has nourished all civilizations': A Conversation with Algerian artist Rachid Koraichi

Rachid Koraichi solo exhibition, 2016. Credit: Aicon Gallery

Paris-based Algerian artist Rachid Koraichi, 73, is known around the world for his use of numbers, letters, mystical symbols and signs in his artworks. He is also an outspoken critic of the challenges people regularly face in the Middle East and North Africa, from racism to immigration to poverty. “We cannot sit still and work in a bubble without thinking about our environment and what surrounds us,” said Koraichi in an interview with Global Voices. “There is still enormous suffering in many countries.” In 2019, in response to devastating waves of migrants losing their lives in search of a better life, he created a cemetery in Tunisia called “Jardin d’Afrique” (“Garden of Africa”), to serve “as a burial site and memorial for migrants who have died in the Mediterranean Sea.” Dozens of drowning victims have already been buried in the cemetery. Koraichi’s worldview is heavily influenced by Sufism, poetry, philosophy and Quranic verses, and his works have been exhibited throughout the world for decades, from solo exhibitions in New York to art fairs such as Frieze and the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair.

Rachid Koraichi, from the series A Nation In Exile.

A painter, sculptor and calligrapher, Koraichi's work incorporates poems and quotes from Sufi mystics such as Rumi and Al-Arabi and Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and creates a mysterious and moving universe that offers the audience the chance to enjoy its beauty, regardless of the riddle the words may, for many, pose. I express my appreciation to Dheeya Somaiya of Aicon Art for making this interview possible. Excerpts from the interview follow: Omid Memarian: What is your strongest inspiration, something that has driven you to create art for decades, whether sculptures, paintings, or ceramics? Rachid Koraichi: I have realized the dream of my own mother. My mother drew a lot, even as a young girl. She received France's grand prize for drawing (at that time Algeria was a French colony). I have evolved in this direction, often under her gaze. When I was working, she would stand behind me and see where I was at, how things were going, how the canvas was developing and so on. For me, it was this sense of my mother looking over my shoulder that was very important. It was really a continuation of what she would have liked to do in her youth and perhaps in her adult life, something she could not achieve for many reasons. She had to stop her studies after she got married. She had a lot of children, which actually meant she was not able to do what she wanted to do. When I picture my mother, I always see her cooking for the whole family, then she moves and stands behind me, looking at a painting I have been working on for a few days, all without saying a word. She leaves and, from time to time, she comes back again. I still feel her eyes on my back, without realizing it; the tenderness, the affection and the desire for her son to make art.

Rachid Koraichi, Madrid, 2018. Credit: Aicon Gallery.

OM: Mahmoud Darwish, the renowned Palestinian poet, has a very strong presence in your oeuvre, including your exhibition, “Path of Roses/Beirut’s Poem/A Nation in Exile.” What's your connection to him and his poems? And how he has persistently been a part of your visual vocabulary? RK: The bond and connection with Mahmoud Darwish goes back several decades. Certainly, Mahmoud Darwish is a significant poet of the Palestinian cause, which has also proved to be a great cause for people across the Arab world, the Islamic world, and people in all countries who seek peace and true decolonization, because today the history of Palestine poses questions for all of us about its past, its present and certainly its future. When Mahmoud Darwish died, a three-day period of national mourning was announced—which is rare in a state that barely exists as a defined territory, especially for a poet. This speaks to his profound importance. Mahmoud left Beirut and settled in Tunisia where he was allocated a house in Sidi Bou Said. That's where I had a workshop. This house belonged to my friend, the painter Ali Belaada. He was an artist and a great man. We were neighbors. Mahmoud liked to cook but I did not, so that was the beginning of what became a strong bond. We saw each other every day, we spent the afternoons and evenings together, and then one day I said to him: “Listen Mahmoud, as long as you're here, as long as I'm here, let’s create as much as we can together, take things forward, reflect on them.” What interests me in Mahmoud Darwish is his writing: the moment, the story, the pulse that triggered the writing of the poetic text. It was not about illustration—I'm not an illustrator, I'm a visual artist. I also connected with Mahmoud Darwish over Jalaluddin Rumi who was the spiritual father of Dariush. There was work around his spirituality related to dance and music, and this in particular countered the Islamists who forbade radio, television, music, dance and the arts. Rumi is a great Islamic mystic, who anchored his philosophy and thought. Dance as an element is a fundamental axis of his philosophy and mysticism.

Rachid Koraïchi, Three Banners Installation. Credit: Aicon Gallery

OM: What is the role of artists, particularly those who have access to global platforms in both shaping and shifting narratives to confront major issues of our time, such as immigration, racism and intolerance/injustice? RK: We cannot sit still and work in a bubble without thinking about our environment and what surrounds us. There is still enormous suffering in many countries. Look at the experience of independence: unfortunately almost all countries that revolted against Western colonization found themselves under the dictator's boot in their own country. It is serious. Before, we had a clear cause for which we struggled. Many were even willing to die for it. But today, we see our leaders plunder their countries and their people. We cannot sit idly by and accept this. Look at Algeria: after seven years of horrific wars, we wanted a level of existence that they did not give us. Our leaders continued to behave almost like dictators, torturers, occupiers. Maybe things will change; the world has changed and we hope things will be different. Today we see clearly the acts of racism that are still happening in North America, we see very well acts of racism from one tribe to another in Africa, and how one tribal leader raises his population against their neighbors. Today, in many countries, we live as if we had learned nothing from the history of our continent. We artists are questioned, we are obliged by our conscience, to take a stand, it is impossible to remain inactive and do nothing.

Rachid Koraichi onstallation. Credit: Aicon Gallery.

OM: Words, numbers, symbols and signs are some of the major elements that you draw and visualize in an aesthetically beautiful and sophisticated harmonic way. What’s your connection to the numbers and words in your works? RK: I think that numbers chart the paths of our existence. From conception to birth, to life, to the beginning of life: this is a journey that is peculiar to us. The Arabs have invented quite a few things, including the famous Arabic numerals with which we work, the talismans and the elements found in the architecture of texts or talismans have always been the basis of pattern structure of drawings and paintings. It is this form of magic that is not black magic or simply magic, it is really an algebraic, mathematical, philosophical and also mystical reflection that comes from the mystery, the mystery of writing, the mystery of the figure. I have always been interested in the writing of letters, the writing of words, in composition that becomes almost minimalist. It may be a form of cannibalism: of all that the eye sees, the things on which the gaze arises. After all, there is the evolution and reflection that the brain makes and that also our sensitivity and our way of digesting and seeing what all that can give and how to pass it to the other. African art has nourished all civilizations, all cultures. Artists like Picasso, Matisse and many others drew heavily and deeply into African art. Because this land is generous, it is fertile, it is truly great. Really we owe a vote of thanks to this wonderful continent that allows us not only to exist but also to give lessons, even if some people want to push us into the corner as we are sitting at the back of the class. We are not sitting in the last row of the class. We are the first in the class, except we saw our cultures looted, and we fade from time to time. Unfortunately, in our continent we let others really loot us quietly and at all levels.

Rachid Koraichi. From the series Salome. Credit: Aicon Gallery.

OM: As cultural/religious symbols and also calligraphy are dominant in your artworks, how, in your opinion, is your work communicated to an audience who might have a different cultural and historical background? RK: I think that all humans can decode aesthetic and beautiful things. When I see myself in the exhibitions on the Mayans and the Incas, the Egyptians, African art and others, the audiences are mixed. An object has a value and life, it’s loaded and it’s not just a matter of aesthetic beauty. People all come with their life stories, with their formations, their cultures, their backgrounds, and try to apprehend things. Maybe we do not all apprehend them in the same way, but I believe that every human has a certain sensitivity and uses it. I think about the history of art in passing time, that makes a work continue to exist or disappear on its own. It goes back to the time of Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci or others who came before them and even the people of prehistory, when they drew on the cave walls, they did not think for a moment that it would last centuries or millennia. People did things for the sake of beauty, but it was also a time when they were in a desert or were in a cave, and they wanted a playful way of painting on the walls. Even today, you will see children pick up pens and draw on the wall or table of the house.

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khalilhumam · 4 years

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History, landscape, body: A conversation with Pakistani artist Ali Kazim

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History, landscape, body: A conversation with Pakistani artist Ali Kazim

Ali Kazim, Shah-Savar (a good rider). Pigment on wasli paper, 72cm x108cm.

Currently focused on an upcoming solo show scheduled for 2021 at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, UK, prominent Pakistani artist Ali Kazim says he hasn't experienced any significant changes to his work since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. But he acknowledges that the art world will be hit hard as economies struggle or collapse in response to the virus that continues to impact almost every aspect of life across the world. Kazim, 46, was born and raised in Pakistan and received his BFA degree from the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan in 2002 and an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK, in 2011. He currently lives and works as a multidisciplinary artist in Lahore, where he is also an assistant professor at the National College of Arts. While Kazim works in a variety of genres and techniques, he has stood out for his portraits, which present realistically depicted subjects in surreal settlings against backdrops of powerful color. Kazim’s works have been exhibited in major international fairs and exhibitions around the world, including New York’s Frieze Art Fair in 2019, and collected by New Yorks's Metropolitan Museum, the Asia-Pacific Museum, the British Museum, Australia’s Queensland Art Gallery, and others. In an interview with Global Voices, Ali Kazim speaks about his fascination with the human body, the inspiration he takes from landscape, his current work and what we should know about art in Pakistan now. Excerpts from the interview follow: You have a sort of fascination with the human body, from your body drawings in 2002 up to now. How has this influenced what art means to you? I think the human body is such a fascinating form. It is complex both in its physicality and as a thematic concern. The body, which is core to performing everyday functions, keeps doing its tasks even most of the time without our conscious knowledge, while it goes through various emotional and spiritual stresses. The figurative works I’ve produced perhaps are glimpses of those moments it goes through.

Ali Kazim, Untitled (ruins series). Watercolor pigment on paper, 206cm x 460cm, 2018.

Is there any connection between your work on the history of landscapes and the human body both in terms of the technique you use (painting-drawing) and the meaning of the work? I wanted to make some portraits or images based on human figures. I wanted to start with my own explanations, but at that point I didn’t really know where to start until I came across a replica of the Priest King (a small, white, lo- fired steatite statue from the Indus Valley civilization) at Lahore museum. That is probably the earliest example of a portrait that has survived in this part of the world. It gave me a reason to make sketches of it and then a portrait of the Priest King. I developed a new body of work from there. I wanted to create tales by placing one or two elements next to the portraits, whether it was a prayer cap, a parrot, or a shaving razor. I fell in love with the watercolor wash technique. I was gradually discovering the possibilities of constructing the images by adding thin layers of colored washes, removing extra pigment from the surface and rendering it with tiny brushes. I guess in that way the formal aspects of the work became important for me. In early 2013 I started visiting the excavated Harrapan sites near my hometown. The Ruins series landscapes are based on the mounds of the Indus Valley civilization. I think they are in a way collective portraits of the people who may have lived there. I was more interested in these sorts of historical connections.

Ali Kazim, Topi Walah II. Pigment and pressure printing on wasli, 50cm x 75cm.

You have been very active internationally, exhibiting your work in major cities in the world and with museums like the Metropolitan acquiring your work. How is your work received by the art community in Lahore and Pakistan? It’s such an honor that some prestigious institutions around the world have acquired my work over a period of time. I’ve been actively exhibiting in Pakistan since the beginning of my career. I was invited to make a large human hair sculpture/drawing for the first edition of the Karachi Biennale in 2017. The project was appreciated well; I received the jury’s prize at the very first biennale of Pakistan. Then the next year for the inaugural edition of the Lahore Biennale I made a large installation called “Untitled (Ruins of the lovers temple)” in a public garden with five thousand life-size terracotta hearts. Towards the end of the biennale, people were allowed to pluck hearts from the walls of the ruins. I later traced this and was surprised to see how people showed so much care for the fragile terracotta hearts they picked up from the site or gifted it to their loved ones. The project is living its new life. My recent large-scale watercolor drawing “The Conference of the Birds” was exhibited last year in the Karachi Biennale and this year I did two projects for the Lahore Biennale, including a large installation of 3,000 unbaked clay birds at an abandoned brick factory. The installation lasted until the rain fell. The process of the clay birds turning to earth was very beautiful and poetic. What is there about art in Pakistan that people in the world should know and look for? Apart from contemporary art, the region has more to offer. There are fascinating cave engravings from the Paleolithic age in the north of Pakistan. The magical terracotta artifacts from the Indus Valley Civilization are amazing. The Gandhara sculptures, which truly are remarkable in their appearance. It’s hard to take your eyes off the Fasting Buddha at Lahore Museum. These Gandharan sculptures in many ways are the first examples of the earliest form of globalization. It is fascinating to see how a new genre of sculpture developed when the Indo-Greek styles emerged. Then the Mughal miniature paintings are a visual treat. The two main cities, Lahore and Karachi, have successfully held two editions of the biennales each year since 2017. That has started a new era, with local people getting a chance to see some amazing works from Pakistani and international artists. This year the Lahore Literary Festival’s dates overlapped with the Lahore Biennale towards the closing week.

Ali Kazim, Untitled. Watercolor pigment on paper, 30cm x 35cm, 2018.

Which artist/artists have had the most influence in your work? There are many artists I admire very much. I am completely in love with Doris Salcedo, Kiki Smith, Louise Bourgeois, Cornelia Parker, Robert Gobber, and Vija Celmins’ work. I have just realized that most of my favorite artists are female. Their work is much informed, emotionally charged and very intelligently made with loads of patience. I think everything is there. They have produced immaculate works over the period of time. My works on paper technique owe much to the Bengal School’s watercolorists. I’ve learned a lot by observing their paintings that are in public collections in Lahore, and have also seen some in Delhi. Art schools don’t create/produce artists. If that's true, what’s the realistic expectation from such institutions regarding the artistic process of individuals who attend them? I think art schools provide an environment where one tests ideas and talks about them with the fellow striving young artists. Some of them will continue studio practice; others will advance in related fields such as art writing, curation, galleries, art fabrication etc. They also can create their own circle of creative people while going to the school. Schools offer graduates the ability to showcase their best to the world and take chances. They get connected with the art world. These are important steps to practically enter the art world.

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