POOYA ABBASIAN
Artist's statement
Iranian art is an interesting subject for research, especially because of the impression of politics and culture.
I always tried to get to a new achievement by combining different medias together and I had always wanted to find a specific field for my projects,
In my works, I always tried to use Iranian culture and character in different form.
This is the statement of one of my first work that named "Exopalasht" - a mixture from an English word: Exotic and a Persian word: Palasht. Palasht is a colloquial word in Old Persian and means demon.
It can be said that recently works of many Iranian artists are distinctive cliché. Most of them are applying traditional and national (oriental, Iranian-Islamic) patterns as a tool to attract foreign audiences. As a matter of fact some of these works quench overseas viewers thirst toward exotic art. More over exotic works are also applicable to their hypothesis about oriental artist’s works. As a result Western audiences pay special attention to exotism. The theorem is neither ignoring all these achievements nor finding these artists guilty for using these symbols in their work.
My works on Exopalasht are criticizing superficial and abusive use of these traditional patterns and national symbols and turning them to meaningless cliché.
And this is the part of statement of my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th work, from the project Aklil-al-molook.
Thus, a new generation of painting emerged, carrying a false name, ‘miniature’. It attempted to retain something of the tradition while persisting to attract the contemporary audience. The golden skies, the silver rivers, the flaming trees, and the colourful birds, all became void of meaning, as a result of the disrupted link with the first source. The elements of the ideal world as a lamé with its golden wraps pillaged were reduced to a beautiful icon replete with the nonsense. Parallel to this, the other two sources continued their tasks in a new way: The dignity of the Ideal Beauteous became a site for manifestation of mastery in plastic surgery. The eyes grew larger as the noses tended upwards. The Sormeh (Collyrium) which seemed an eternal phenomenon was replaced by a heavy make-up that could be removed at night with a cotton pad. However, curling garments and deer were still there. The result is a semiotic, and of course visual, disorder originating from the third source, which could be seen both ironically and wistfully.
I’ve used three layers of boxes for the mature of perspective in Persian painting and the plates for Persian contemporary popular art.
And finally my video, it’s a part of a project “obligatory military service.” I’ve combined 2 videos, 1st video of a war and the 2nd video from wedding and the voices are overlap on each other.
