When in 1997 French Immigration Office denied her the permit of stay and asked her to leave France, Ghazel, artist of Iranian origin, did not peacefully wait further, in any case unfavourable, development of events. In her own way she met the challenge so typical for lives and fate of multimillion population of dislocated. She made an announcement and printed the poster where, beside obligatory photo of herself, the following text was printed: “URGENT, Woman, 33, artist of Middle Eastern origin and WP (without permit) seeks a husband, from EU, preferably France, contact e-mail …” and so forth. Here, for us who are not that dislocated, the conclusion of her action is not that important. It seems the outcome was positive, because – at least temporarily – she is living in Montpellier. What is important – and whereto her action indicates – is not only the question of personal identity defined by some, until now, general terms of reference like nation, nationality, family, society, culture, gender, but it’s transformations into completely different quality that with these general ID terms of reference has nothing to do any more. With what it does, then?
It seems that individual solutions and personal paradigm are again heaving in sight. Personal relationship and personal reflection and personal responsibility. Chinese in France, Kenyan in London, American in Oslo, Albanian in Milan, Palestinian woman who knows where, Englishman in Taiwan, Croat in New York, Ghazel, Iranian woman, in Montpellier, etc. are the great community of “others”, that seriously questions the values on which are founded the myths of “first” and “native” ones, not to say “indigenous”, wherever they are. It has become obvious that the so called cultural identity is at the same time fiction and need or – more to the point: invented necessity, but also a necessary invention.
“My work talks about the outsider I am in the West and the outsider I am in Iran” – says Ghazel and continues: My films are like home movies; like ‘moving-snap shots’ documenting my life, my mind, my observations, my ideas, my thoughts, my trophies, my fears, my desires, my souvenirs, my wishes, my experiences, my present, my past, my future, my emotions, my hopes, my passions, my energy, my feelings, my obsessions, my complexes, my paradoxes, my identities, my dreams, my memories, my memory…They are my parallel life.”
It is becoming more and more obvious that in the interspace there is still enough air and room for all of those who have jumped from one space into another. This interspace has indeed proved to be creatively more stimulating than the one populated by the “first” and “native” ones who, from the poor, exhausted, original soil of their own space, appeal to the spirits of tradition and their sanctity. Interspace has the force of amalgamation, the force of transformation and the force of creation of values that surely, already now, overshadow local myths. Ghazel is not alone. Her population counts many millions and whether world wants it or not, it has to come to peace with this fact. The sooner, the better.
Connecting at least three traditions (authentic-local, global-contemporary and good behaviour family stereotype for little girls), Ghazel managed to create a charming story about the notorious generation gap. “Her video sequences, made in the fashion of silent film comedy, show the breaking up between the culture firmly rooted in traditional virtues and the modern young woman who seeks the “modernity” of her own life”, wrote Elizabeth Delin Hansen about Ghazel’s work in the foreword for the exhibition “Ekbatana”, shown last autumn in the Center for Contemporary Art in Copenhagen. With no susceptibility neither to herself nor to the tradition that she’s bound to, Ghazel lives her life and her art without complex and in that way, the best she knows, uses the space where she wound up. It is possible to breathe quite nicely there, regardless of husband, passport, permits and other trivia.
The time has come that the “first” learn something of the “others”. Until now we looked at each other in the mirror and now we shall look face to face, says the old apostolic message. It has a lot of sense. Between the two, and I would say even three traditions, Ghazel has chosen her way, she has given her answer to that three-headed monster and thus she, little girl, went to play hide-and-seek with the boys.
Želimir Koščević
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I then decided to start putting advertisements and announcements for a marriage of convenience, in order to find a husband (passport). I have 9 versions of these posters. I hire good-looking young men to distribute these flyers in openings (and only give them to men). Sometimes the posters are put up on walls in different cities. I answer the men who e-mail me, some have seen the flyers or posters, and some have seen the different web sites with different versions of this project.
Ghazel
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Exhibited Works:
Me 1997-2000 40’
Three 24 inch monitors,
each show about 13 minutes of the film.
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Details of important solo and group shows since 1998:
2003 Clandestini/Clandestines, 50th International Exhibition Venice Biennale, Venice: Installation of Me 2000-2003 (curator Francesco Bonami)
8th Havana Biennal, Havanna: Me, installation special edition (curator Nelson Herrera)/ VEIL, organized by inIVA (London) at The New Art Gallery, Walsall; Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool; MOMA, Oxford: Me 49, Me 42, Me 44/
Made In Paris TheSpace@inIVA, London: Me 49, Me 42, Me 44/
Orient-Okzident, Prince Max palace, Karlsruhe & FrauenMuseum, Bonn/ Narcissism: Self-Love to Death, Gozo Contemporary, Malta/ Algérie 03, Espace Electra, Paris (curator Jean-Louis Pradel)/ The New Scheherzads, CCCB, Barcelona (curator Rose Issa)/
2002 HOME, Sarajevo Center For Contemporary Arts, Sarajevo:
Triptych video installation of Me 30, Me 28 and Me 33 (curator Dunja Blazevic)/
« …confiture demain et confiture hier- Mais jamais confiture aujourd’hui… », Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain, Sète, France : Triptych video installation of Me 27, Me 26 and Me 29 (curator Noëlle Tissier)/
‘Wanted (Urgent)’, at Meschec Gaba’s Salon, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (curator Alexandre Pollazzon)
Wanted (Urgent), Qamariyeh Gallery, Birzeit University, Palestine International Video Festival, Palestine
2001 The Iranian Contemporary Art, Barbican Arts, London (curators Rose Issa and Carol Brown) & Regards Persan, Espace EDF Electra, Paris (curator Michket Krifa): the installation of ‘Me 1997-2000’, divided into three 25inch monitors in a dark, closed space, Open studios, ISCP, NYC/
Me 1997-2000 (curators Zelimir Koscevic and Branko Franceschi), Miroslav Kraljevic Gallery, Zagreb, Croatia: solo show
Wanted performance, Nuyorican Poets Café, New York (performed by Tehut-Nine Sunrason, renowned slam poet)/
My Generation, London (curated by Mark Nash and Alexandre Pollazzon)
2000 Ekbatana?, Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Arts Center (curator Elisabeth Delin Hansen)
Triptych video Installation (Me VIII, Me X, Me XII)
Performance ‘Wanted’, Galeries Lafayette Windows, Avignon
1999 Wedding I, Tacheles Kunsthaus, Berlin (with Yoshiko Shimada)
Installation of Wedding I film (and wedding pictures) along with the film shot at Mardabad’s Installation (showing the Afghan Refugee’s home and the bourgeois spectators). On other walls of the installation, posters of ‘Wanted’ (version 4) were stuck.
‘Vote’ posters, Jadeh Ghadeem ave, angle of Soheil street, Tehran
Posters of my face (only eyes not hidden) stuck among the campaign posters for the City Council elections.
Sans Titre, Tiroir Régional d’Art Contemporain (Trac), Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain, Montpellier (curator Marie-Pierre Donadio)
Wanted posters (version 6) filling up the Trac (drawer) space.
Untitled I (with Rox Bahro), Aav Gallery, Vanak sq., Tehran
Video installation. Two screens placed in the gallery on opposite sides. One of them is big and is placed on the ground, the other one is small and placed on a shelf in a tiny room in the end of the gallery, my voice (on both screens) repeating birth and death dates of 13 young martyrs and victims. The image is a bad quality black image.
Chronicle of Void and Beyond (with Kaveh Golestan), Golestan Gallery, Tehran
Installation of marked (like a prisoner’s time-passing marks) semi-transparent white veils and a nicely golden-framed portrait of a dead soldier. The spectators were invited at 8:00 p.m. sharp.
At 8:20 they gave up their expectation of seeing a performance and they finally occupied the whole space of the gallery (until then they were leaning on the walls, leaving the center of the gallery empty). At 8:30 three young people (two guys and a girl) who were scattered among the crowd (the gallery was so full that the installation could hardly be seen) dropped dead
simultaneously. My assistant asked everyone to leave the gallery.
I ripped off 3 of the veils and covered the 3 bodies;
meanwhile the spectators were calmly leaving the gallery.
Once everyone out I turned off the lights; locked the door and left with my assistant; Kaveh was waiting for us a few streets away. By 8:50 the gallery owner asked the stunned spectators (who could see nothing of the installation and the bodies on the ground because the window and door were covered and it was dark inside) to leave for security reasons.
1998 Red Home Installation III, Mardabad, Iran
Installation in our ex-home in ruins in Mardabad, a tribute to martyrs like my friend Ardalan, who died in the Iran/Irak war.
Red Home Installation IV, Mardabad, Iran
Installation of Wedding I film, shown on a golden TV screen, installed along with golden framed cheesy bride and groom portraits (me as the bride). The installation took place in our ex-house in ruins, where an Afghan refugee family lived for a year. The installation was mixed with the family’s personal objects, and the family continued their daily life during the whole day, the spectators had to go in the intimacy of this family’s home to see my installation.
Marknaden, World Trade Center, Stockholm
Group show, video Sheep (Moutons) 5 and installation of photgram veils.
Cet été là…, Centre Regional d’Art Contemporain Languedoc-Roussillon, Sète (curators Noëlle Tissier and Bernard Marcadeh)
Group show, a series of wanted flyers.
97- 00 Wanted performances, posters, distribution of flyers, internet sites…(in Berlin, Paris, Sète, Montpellier, Stockholm…)
This work started in 1997 when I received a letter from the French Ministry of Interior asking me to leave the French Territory immediately (they refused to renew my permit to stay).
I then decided to start putting advertisements and announcements for a marriage of convenience, in order to find a husband (passport). I have 9 versions of these posters. I hire good-looking young men to distribute these flyers in openings (and only give them to men). Sometimes the posters are put up on walls in different cities. I answer the men who e-mail me, some have
seen the flyers or posters, and some have seen the different web sites with different versions of this project.
