I wrote the story in 2010, but I’m actually not sure how or why.  I was mulling over writing a short story about something completely different – for grown-ups – when this one came to me, whispered its opening paragraph into my head, and settled into its narrative with surprising ease.  Surprising, I say, because I hadn’t written anything for … umm… a decade; and because the story is rhythmic and structured, like the verses of a song -  several times I doubted I’d be able to pull it off.

I have a special affection for folk tales and fairy stories, and since I have done a fair bit of storytelling to coax my daughters to bed, the genre is familiar.  The kernel of this idea was something my mother used to tell me whenever she felt I was hogging too much attention:

حفت نفر آینه به دست
سکینه خانم سرش را می بست

…which I translated as:

Seven maids did mirrors bear

For Sakina Khanum to bind her hair.

It’s a lighthearted young girl’s book, full of irony,  and hopefully, good lessons in human virtues.  I can’t tell you very much more about it, though, unless you want to volunteer as a reader!

Here’s the blurb:

Sakina, the only daughter of the King of Dur-Bad, is wise, witty and talented, but she must spend her days cloistered in the royal household being pampered, dressed and coiffed by her seven handmaids, so that she can sit smiling for guests.  But when her curiosity leads her to run away and enter the forest, she changes her own destiny and that of the whole kingdom… a modern tale in a traditional context that will enchant young and old alike.

My first young reader (bless her heart) said it was “better than Harry Potter!”  Well, if it does 1/10 as well as Harry Potter, I’ll be winning!

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The theme of this year’s conference is Baha’i Faith and Modernity.

“This is a century of life and renewal. Sciences and arts, industry and invention have been reformed. Law and ethics have been reconstituted, reorganized. The world of thought has been regenerated. Sciences of former ages and philosophies of the past are useless today.”

“Religion is the outer expression of the divine reality. Therefore, it must be living, vitalized, moving and progressive. If it be without motion and non progressive, it is without the divine life; it is dead. The divine institutes are continuously active and evolutionary; therefore, the revelation of them must be progressive and continuous.”

- Excerpts from an address given by Abdu’l-Baha at the Free Religious Association in Boston, Massachusetts(24 May 1912)

So honoured that my work will be exhibited for the duration of the Conference, thanks to the organisers!  If you have any questions, please contact me at thisevanescentsoul[at]gmail.com

2011	2010	2011	2011
2009	2009

Detail

Veil 2 has been a long time coming – I first sketched it out in Spring, 2010.  (It is to be part of a trio along with this one, and probably the most light-hearted of the bunch).   The medium: parts of Vogue, Cosmo, etc. and snippets of Diderot’s “Lettre des aveugles a l’usage de ceux qui voient”, collaged with acrylic paint and medium onto wood panel.  Enjoy!

Veil 2, acrylic and paper on wood

Detail

From September 2-17, catch me with KAOS at Southfields Gallery!

223 Wimbledon Park Road, SW18 5RH  (Tube: Southfields)

Mon-Fri, 11am-5pm; Sat 11am-4pm
Gallery contact: 07947 675 059

It will be a sampling of some of my very oldest and most recent work along with other members of our newly-formed local collaborative group, Kingston Artists Open Studios.

Bounty (2011) acrylic on linen, 40cm x 30cm	Abstract 1 (2011) mixed media on paper, 22 x 22cm
Mirror (1997) Acrylic on canvas, 16″x20″	Bridge (1998) Acrylic on canvas, 30″ x 36″
Textual Misbehaviour (1994) Mixed media on linen, 36″ x 22″

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click to see result

‘Seven Deadly Sins’ has been present in a number of events lately, which is after all its raison d’etre (read what Roger White said about art?), even if the location is not the typical white-walled, ‘conventional’ exhibition space – or even a building.

Many people ask me whether these panels are paintings.  I never know how to answer.  The technique is identical to that which I use in many

of my paintings, where I transfer a printed image into a painting (in this case onto a gesso’ed wood panel) using acrylic medium.  The difference is that with ’7DS’ there is no actual pigment used to create any images.  The grey and black that you see is actually from the printed material.  As such, I did not want to paint portraits of the Yaran because the piece is not about reproducing their likenesses.  What the piece IS about is the juxtaposition of the identities of the Yaran with the concepts of the ‘seven sins’ and the findings of each investigation.  So, I used the press photographs (all cleaned up and modified in the same way), and collaged over the chosen text.

At one recent event, one visitor was very excited about the artwork in the break-out space.  He particularly liked the way the faces dissolved as one went in to read the text, and the text dissolved as one stood back to view the faces.  He said the experience was similar to some sculptures!

But the most satisfying outcome for me, is watching visitors engaging in a conversation – not with me – and not even about the artwork  – but about a broad range of meaningful topics, like religious persecution, the nature of revelation, and the meaning of sacrifice.  That is when I know art works!

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The Bounty, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 cm

Picking up where you left off is not easy when it involves a 9 year gap – but that is one of the things I’ve been trying to do this year – moving onward from some of the ‘abstract landscapes’ I did pre-2003, using montages of images taken from photographs.

But this time, rather than being inspired by great spaces and places, buildings under construction, or crowded cities, I am taking my cues from the Creative Word, and depicting ‘psychic’ (spiritual, rational) relationships in a more purposeful way.  Here is one such ‘landscape’, which I call ‘The Bounty’.

As long as women are prevented from attaining their highest possibilities, so long will men be unable to achieve the greatness which might be theirs.”  - Abdu’l-Bahá

…the education of woman is more necessary and important than that of man, for woman is the trainer of the child from its infancy. If she be defective and imperfect herself, the child will necessarily be deficient; therefore, imperfection of woman implies a condition of imperfection in all mankind, for it is the mother who rears, nurtures and guides the growth of the child.  - Abdu’l-Bahá

When Neda was shot, I was in the studio painting ‘Black and White’.  I was blissfully naive, and permanently tuned into the news, waiting for the announcement that the wait was over – the long, cold wait in the wilderness of exile that mine and my parents’ generation have endured (although for me personally, this exile has been relatively gentle, and its ill effects mostly surmountable).

And yet, to the events of 2009, I cannot pretend to be anything but an outside observer.  I have not lived in my country since I was six, I can’t read the language well, which means I can’t learn about the culture first-hand, but always through an English-language filter.  So, conscious of being an outsider, I asked myself:  who are these people on the videos on YouTube?  Who are these people on the street, those walking by the camera casually, chattering about cars and dinner arrangements on the accidental audio?  This was early days, maybe a week after the election, when many of the videos were relatively uneventful, even jubilant.  Who are those swarthy, imposing men now standing diligently with their cameraphone, and who were they last week?  Who were they thirty years ago?  And who am I, anyway?

The man who shot Neda was temporarily captured by onlookers, and his ID card was posted on the web.  Later, they let him go.  As the summer wore on, women stood in the way of basij forces being beaten by protesters, guards deliberately tripped off their motorcycles were herded into quiet corners and given water to drink, and even reassurance.  On a certain day, flowers were offered to the baton-wielding army.  And I thought:  Of course! of course.  They are all our sons.  All of them.  One day in the future we will have to heal this great weeping wound (read: reconciliation).

But after Neda was shot, and the outrage over a woman’s killing loomed large, women became the scapegoats and targets.  Every woman’s face wore Neda’s bewildered, questioning look, taunting the forces.  These same women, stalwart, flower-wielding, basij-sheltering peace warriors, began to be knocked down and dragged away brutally, while Neda’s death was repeated over and over in dozens of reports.  Neda’s became the face of all of them.

As an outsider, I thought: what a terrible capacity lay in those ambivalent-looking people of ‘Black and White’, for cruelty against, well, everybody, but particularly people who could be their own sisters or mothers!  Where did it come from?  Did the last 30 years put it there?  Did desperation and poverty put it there?  Or does it weave through our culture from the beginning?  Does it weave through all cultures?

The more I thought of Neda, the more I thought of (what I have read about) my grandmother’s generation, and the generations before hers.  Mothers grooming their nine-year old daughters for marriage (as a mother of daughters I am unable to fathom this!), older women guiding the young about how to withstand the trials of early marriage (often to much older men).  This has been going on for centuries, and not just in Iran.  Women teaching their girls to be subservient, and teaching their sons to be like their fathers.  Did these mothers know any better, and did they have a choice?  Of course, they did not.  Were they allowed to be educated, even to read and write?  Could the stitches that they were weaving into our great tapestry come out any other way?  Was there any other pattern possible, with the threads that they had been given?  The threads of ignorance, fear, duplicity, and the hook of servitude?

There was a moment in history, a generation ago, when we thought we were ‘emancipated’.  But it was incomplete:  women realized they were capable of more.  But did men continue as they were?  Did we forgot to educate our sons to rely on their own accomplishments rather than on undeserved praise and privileges?  If they were greedy, boisterous, proud, mischievous, scheming, did we smile and say ‘Mashalla‘?  Were we focussing so hard on daughters that we forgot about the sons?   For here we are again less than a century later, and the net of tyranny is again thrown over women.  The weave of this fabric looks the same.

The only way to change it is to cut those threads.  And throw the hooks and needles behind us.

Detail

I am thrilled and excited: ‘Seven Deadly Sins’, a piece about the Yaran, has just had its first exhibition. The seven wood panels were displayed at the Baha’i Arts and Letters Conference in London.  Many thanks to the organisers who installed it in my absence!

As the primary calling of this piece is to “plug into” related events in order to draw attention to the persecution of the Baha’is in Iran, this particular work of art has to be easily transportable, so I spent some time preparing it for travel.

As I was packing the panels into their case, I thought of the Yaran in their cramped cells. Recently, the Yaran were transferred out of their ‘temporary’ cells in Evin, where they had no adequate food or bedding for two and a half years, into ‘permanent’ cells in Gohardasht prison, where far from improving, their conditions have deteriorated, as they now also face a lack of basic hygiene and overcrowding.

[Note: update on the Yaran's situation here]

My ardent hope is for the exhibition to travel widely (because they cannot), for their names to ring clear (because their voices are stifled), so that many more can call for justice in their name while they continue to endure indignities.

If you are having an event, locally or not, and would like to exhibit ‘Seven Deadly Sins’, please contact me.

“The breath of these souls is in itself richer than all

the treasures of the earth.”

- Baha’u'llah, Gleanings, p.10

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