Curatorial Statement

 

Though the ideas freedom and enlightenment have played an indispensable role in the history of this country, they are by no means peculiar to the European worldview which we as a Western state have inherited. Indeed, they have been guiding themes for many of the world’s peoples, notably those spiritual cultures which influenced the great civilizations of the Asian continent. Persian culture in particular has been shaped profoundly by the mystical perspective on freedom and enlightenment, referred to extensively in Sufi literature.

 

Iranian culture in the U.S. represents an interesting juxtaposition of the various understandings of freedom and enlightenment: for example, the social and political one which has defined the more recent centuries of European thought, and the age-old spiritual and psychological one which has for centuries if not millennia left its mark on what we call 'The East'.

 

No matter the culture of origin, such fundamentally important themes for humankind have always naturally found expression in the arts, whether in literature or through visual media. In our exhibit "Freedom and Enlightenment", we would like to explore what these concepts mean for Iranian artists living in the Bay Area, whose lives are determined to some extent by both Western and Eastern ideas on this subject. How have contemporary Iranian artists living in this country experienced this matter, and how do they express it through their work? How have they come to understand the idea of 'freedom and enlightenment' in its many senses, given the cultural and political differences they have surely felt between their native place and their adopted home? How, and to what extent, are these differences integrated in their art?

 

In an attempt to answer such questions as these, we have gathered artists from the Bay Area Iranian community who work in the most diverse media, including paints, calligraphy, ceramics and electronic media, using both traditional and contemporary approaches. We hope to foster a conversation both among the artists themselves and between the artists and the general public, so that the commonalities and differences in the Iranian-American experience of these themes can be explored and clarified.

 

 

Selected artworks based on the alphabetical order of the artists' first name