-
Artist Gohar Dashti takes her native Iran as subject matter, exploring the natural and manmade disasters of its past, and how they impact its citizens and feed into its contemporary societal structures. Working in series, she has addressed such topics as the convergence of collective history and individual identity; the wars, revolutions, and once-active volcanoes that have ravaged and shaped the social, political, and environmental topography of Iran; and the place of girls and women in society, caught between modernization and traditional Islamic strictures. In Dashti's Iran, Untitled project, this portfolio set of 8 photographs features staged group portraits set in a vast and empty desert. Each photograph depicts a group of people collectively engaged in an everyday activity or interacting with a large common object: a group of young men stand in a bath tub; women in mourning sit on a long sofa; young men and women fill the stairs and slope of a large playground slide; a mixed generational group of "passengers" wait in line with their luggage; numerous brides and grooms stand on a carpet; teenagers crowd onto a mattress; a group of soldiers stage a cock fight in front of a wire fence; and numerous people, some wearing masks over their mouths, some with arms raised, stand in a large hole in the ground. In all of these scenes tightly packed bodies create a narrative space for the stories of relationships in a constrained world.
In addition to the title and colophon pages there is a brief essay in Farsi written by Mehran Mohajer and translated into English by Sassan Tabatbai.
-
-
