Most Wanted

Intersection For the Arts
May, June 2007
Photos: courtesy of Taraneh Hemami

Open to interpretation by Nirmala Natarage, SF Station, excerpts: “Hemami’s work emerged from a poster she found on an official U.S. government website shortly after 9/11: a low-resolution image of the most wanted international terrorists. Strangely, no names were associated with the blurry faces, which gets to the very absurdity of the poster’s encouragement of fear-laden vigilantism on the part of “unmarked” Americans.”

The wall of names

“… Arabic script […] they can be seen as pretty, exotic, and abstruse, decorative … Or, if you’re a staunch adherent of homeland security, the writing could very well be a terrorist manifesto. The point is that all of these options are viable, depending on who’s looking at them.”

Beaded curtain

Fingerprint Wall

Review at Art Fever: Taraneh Hemami at Intersections (SF)
See artist’s homepage for reviews, interviews and previous projects

Terrorist

‘When President Bush declared that Iran formed part of the Axis of Evil, Khosrow Hassanzadeh decided to make a series of paintings under the title Terrorist. The Tropenmuseum had a retrospective of the painter.

For the Terrorist series, Hassanzadeh made large portraits of himself and his family members, posing as terrorists. The technique, silkscreen, was inspired by the propaganda art of the Iranian revolution. The series should be seen as a declaration of independence, both of the West and of radical Islam.’
News from Amsterdam

Khosrow Hassanzadeh homepage
The Power of Culture, about this exhibition

British museum
Paintings here and here
Self-Portrait
Paint! No matter what!نقاشي كن
Modern Orientalism by Khosrow Hassanzadeh
Muredered women of Mashad and related article at Bad Jens