Shadi Ghadirian’s work is based on women in Iran, the space they occupy, with the intent to show them to the world in an honest and very real portrait partly autobiographical. Beyond the formal, her photographs analyze universal issues concerning women all over the world.
Her own soul is in each of her photographs. She is each of the women, each of the main characters in the old and outdated decor in the series Qajar; those condemned to be housewives in Like Everyday; those censored and self-censored in West by East; this woman in constant change in Ctrl + Alt + Del; the wife that lives with the eternal war in Nil Nil, or the young one that never had a childhood or an adolescence because of the islamic revolution and the conflict with Iraq and wishes for her daughter a lasting peace in White Square; those confined and threatened in Miss Butterfly; and those who are always watching, and see everything in Too Loud a Solitude.
The initial impact brought about by the series Qajar, created by an Iranian artist at the age of 24, to the old world artistic circles has been kept over time due to the quality and content of the series that followed. Creating and producing protest art, or anything that suggests contents susceptible of criticizing the system in Iran, is not easy and worst if you are a woman. Ghadirian chooses, however, the best weapons to keep the loudspeaker from going mute and her message passes through, trespassing censorship and crossing borders.Her generous compositions, are woven with delicate irony ,rich of metaphorical meanings.
Therefore, Ghadirian must be thanked for not only changing the perception we have in the West of the current society in her country, but also for opening a door, allowing photographers to be known in the west and for the west to welcome them
Mario Martín Pareja
Mario Martín Pareja is an author and exhibition curator based in Spain.
Shadi Ghadirian, Com tots els dies
February 8 to April 1, 2018
Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporania, Valencia
Calle Museu, 2
46003 Valencia
Spain
