Ananya Vajpeyi: RE: Image as Event
The paintings -- some of them based on photographs -- along the Sadr Freeway in Tehran, are, taken together, an act of witnessing as well as an exhortation to fight the good fight. Here is the fact of injustice, they seem to say; here is the recent history of American aggression against the Muslim world: Yesterday Palestine, Today Iraq, and as Negar and her respondents all suggest, Tomorrow Iran.
But Iran's future, as prophesied in two of the frames, need not be one of abjection -- it need not resemble the tortured bodies of the prisoners of Abu Ghraib, nor the dead or grieving bodies of the citizens of Palestine. It need not even resemble the soldiers at war in the final frame, perhaps reminiscent of the Iran-Iraq conflict which devastated both countries in the 80s.
For Iran's future, if it were to draw on the resources of Shia history, could recall and recreate the just war of Imam Ali, the noble martyrdom of Imam Hussayn, the battlefield of Karbala where what unfolded was internal to Islam and ultimately cleansed and ennobled all Muslims equally. Iran could be the enemy of American tyranny, and support the victims -- Iraqis, Palestinians, perhaps also the unrepresented Afghans -- of American injustice, rather than becoming victimized in its turn.
The frames, taken together, challenge the inevitability of Muslim defeat at the hands of American imperialism. At the centre of the sequence is a depiction of Mecca and a quotation attributed to Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed: the holiness of both, the site and the personage, acts as a bulwark against what everyone fears is the impending occupation of Iran.
I would not read the six frames collectively to carry quite as ambiguous a message as Negar suggests. The order of images could, perhaps, have been different, to indicate the narrative structure more clearly. The cars are moving from left to right, but when you look at the pictures from left to right, you see Abu Ghraib first (marked, in the summer of 2004, when Negar saw the pictures, as the present -- "Today Iraq"), then the intercession of the holy places and holy persons of Islam (a return to deep history, but also an evocation of the timeless truths of the faith), then Palestine (marked as the past -- "Yesterday Palestine"), then the Iran-Iraq war (that took place further back, in the 1980s), which order makes little chronological sense.
I wonder if one is supposed to read the images from right to left, as one reads the Farsi script? Cars in the opposite lane (of which we can see a few in Negar's first photograph) would see the pictures in that order, from past to present, with the interval or interruption of that which rises above historical time. But either way, it is that eruption out of a sequence of crushing defeats from the 80s to the present that holds out hope for Iran's future, a future that staves off American invasion and instead returns Islam to its core of righteousness, personified in Imam Ali.
To me the message is clear: Muslims have to stop being victims, they have to fight back. Moreover, whatever the national boundaries and national histories that make Iraq and Palestine different from Iran, there is a larger community of the believers, the Ummah. This community exceeds the separation between Muslim nations, and perhaps even transcends the wars they may fight among themselves (as Iran and Iraq did, for so long). It is this community as a whole that is under attack, and therefore the people of Iran must resist the American empire, on behalf of all beleaguered Muslims everywhere.
The value of this momentary glimpse into the public space of Tehran and the images that circulate therein, is precisely that we see a certain engagement with history, a churning of past, present and future, a positioning of faith in the light of wars that have happened, that are happening, and that may be yet to come, and a construction of community based on both separate and shared battles with injustice. The image of the father of the dead Palestinian boy recalls to us the tragedy of the house of Imam Ali. Imam Ali's son Hussayn was martyred in Karbala many centuries ago, and his entire family massacred, including women and children.To this day Iranians mourn the death of that son of Ali, Hussayn -- and Negar herself has written at such length and so beautifully about the traditions of ta'ziyeh in Iran. So what prevents Iranians from feeling compassion and outrage for their Palestinian or Iraqi brethren? Surely the age-old conflict between Shias and Sunnis should not lead Muslims of either sect to submit to American imperialism?
Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon are in ruins. Entire countries and cultures have been devastated by America before our very eyes, pounded by bombs, maimed by mines, raped for oil, bullied, exploited, destroyed. Who can blame the nameless artist of these panels, if the milk of his rage is boiling over?
> Ananya Vajpeyi
But Iran's future, as prophesied in two of the frames, need not be one of abjection -- it need not resemble the tortured bodies of the prisoners of Abu Ghraib, nor the dead or grieving bodies of the citizens of Palestine. It need not even resemble the soldiers at war in the final frame, perhaps reminiscent of the Iran-Iraq conflict which devastated both countries in the 80s.
For Iran's future, if it were to draw on the resources of Shia history, could recall and recreate the just war of Imam Ali, the noble martyrdom of Imam Hussayn, the battlefield of Karbala where what unfolded was internal to Islam and ultimately cleansed and ennobled all Muslims equally. Iran could be the enemy of American tyranny, and support the victims -- Iraqis, Palestinians, perhaps also the unrepresented Afghans -- of American injustice, rather than becoming victimized in its turn.
The frames, taken together, challenge the inevitability of Muslim defeat at the hands of American imperialism. At the centre of the sequence is a depiction of Mecca and a quotation attributed to Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed: the holiness of both, the site and the personage, acts as a bulwark against what everyone fears is the impending occupation of Iran.
I would not read the six frames collectively to carry quite as ambiguous a message as Negar suggests. The order of images could, perhaps, have been different, to indicate the narrative structure more clearly. The cars are moving from left to right, but when you look at the pictures from left to right, you see Abu Ghraib first (marked, in the summer of 2004, when Negar saw the pictures, as the present -- "Today Iraq"), then the intercession of the holy places and holy persons of Islam (a return to deep history, but also an evocation of the timeless truths of the faith), then Palestine (marked as the past -- "Yesterday Palestine"), then the Iran-Iraq war (that took place further back, in the 1980s), which order makes little chronological sense.
I wonder if one is supposed to read the images from right to left, as one reads the Farsi script? Cars in the opposite lane (of which we can see a few in Negar's first photograph) would see the pictures in that order, from past to present, with the interval or interruption of that which rises above historical time. But either way, it is that eruption out of a sequence of crushing defeats from the 80s to the present that holds out hope for Iran's future, a future that staves off American invasion and instead returns Islam to its core of righteousness, personified in Imam Ali.
To me the message is clear: Muslims have to stop being victims, they have to fight back. Moreover, whatever the national boundaries and national histories that make Iraq and Palestine different from Iran, there is a larger community of the believers, the Ummah. This community exceeds the separation between Muslim nations, and perhaps even transcends the wars they may fight among themselves (as Iran and Iraq did, for so long). It is this community as a whole that is under attack, and therefore the people of Iran must resist the American empire, on behalf of all beleaguered Muslims everywhere.
The value of this momentary glimpse into the public space of Tehran and the images that circulate therein, is precisely that we see a certain engagement with history, a churning of past, present and future, a positioning of faith in the light of wars that have happened, that are happening, and that may be yet to come, and a construction of community based on both separate and shared battles with injustice. The image of the father of the dead Palestinian boy recalls to us the tragedy of the house of Imam Ali. Imam Ali's son Hussayn was martyred in Karbala many centuries ago, and his entire family massacred, including women and children.To this day Iranians mourn the death of that son of Ali, Hussayn -- and Negar herself has written at such length and so beautifully about the traditions of ta'ziyeh in Iran. So what prevents Iranians from feeling compassion and outrage for their Palestinian or Iraqi brethren? Surely the age-old conflict between Shias and Sunnis should not lead Muslims of either sect to submit to American imperialism?
Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon are in ruins. Entire countries and cultures have been devastated by America before our very eyes, pounded by bombs, maimed by mines, raped for oil, bullied, exploited, destroyed. Who can blame the nameless artist of these panels, if the milk of his rage is boiling over?
> Ananya Vajpeyi