Made from religious calligraphy the figures are facing security forces and demanding their votes. Again an early Dagod work which I did after the Green movement protests.
doodlejuice.com site as a work of Art
http://www.aharef.info/2006/05/websites_as_graphs.htm lets you draw a beautiful graph of your web site. Here is a graphical view of my Blog.
When Iran went pop!
Pop Art, a set on Flickr.
This pop Art series is in fact a single conceptual work of Art disguised as a Pop Art Series. The images are from found images that were manipulated to represent an aspect of the state of the Iranian society before the revolution and I have used the word pop as a pun for the country blowing up into that revolution. Just as important as the image is the title. The title is a single lined comment or if you like a poem that captures the essence of the social message, and in some cases it simply represent the mood that existed in lyrics and the spirit of the people of the time. a people so different from today that one can image that it was a lost nation .
Minimalist design Of Iranian TV, Cinema and Radio
Minimalist design, a set on Flickr.
Now that I have finished the series, here they are in one place.
Yek Esfahani Dar New York ( A Esfahani in NY)
Esfahan is one of the major cities in Iran. The stereotype of Esfahanies is that of someone famous for being witty, shrewd business person, rather conservative but fun loving people. Esfahan was the capital during the Safavid Dynasty 500 years ago and the foundation of Shiite Iran was set in that city. Because of a long tradition of businness families the people and their roots in tradition often go back a long way. In this comedy series which were a similar to the carry-on British series two prominent Esfahani actors i.e. Arham Sadr and Vahdat brought their stage comedy characters into a series of light comedies. For this poster I used a single misplaced tile against a New York Art Deco design similar to the Sky scrapers but with an Islamic tower to represent the displacement of the main character in NY.
Iran-dokht liberty
The fate of liberty is certainly internationally intertwined so somehow this image came to my mind and I decided to make this work.
Mehdi Meshki va Shalvarak dagh (Mehdi the black and the red hot pants)
A commercial close to grind-house films. These were made in big batches for the general public. They had a mix bag of comedy, family honour, romance and light hearted violence. naser malek motihi who was the lead role usually played these tough guy, man of the neighbourhood type characters but later proved to be a serious competent actor in some of Iran’s classic films.
Raz Derakht Senjed (The mystery of the Russian olive tree)
This was a commercial comedy starring the popular actor Fardin. It was a situation comedy in which a tree “Russian olive tree” had mystical romance powers. Fardin played in many of such films. this category of films were very close to style of Bollywood Cinema i.e. a variety of comedy mixed with song and dance. Although the name of the tree in the west suggests a Russian origin, it is actually a common tree in Iranian culture and its fruit has been used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years.
Sootedelan
Directed by Ali Hatami, staring Behrouz Vosoughi and Shohreh Aghdashlou and Jamshid Mashayekhi.
A wonderful emotional film about a mentally disabled man who finds genuine love with young beautiful prostitute.
The characters found solace in each other’s company and together they relived a lost childhood. They liked to make and place toy windmills in flower pots and I chose that for the Art work.
This was the film that introduced Shohreh Aghdashlou as a new young talent. The film was unique for its story line and was very much in line with poetic allegories used in Iranian Cinema. Later in post-revolution times i.e. the 80s I was fortunate enough to meet Shohreh Aghdashlou. As a young student I was living within a community of Artists in East end of London and at the time she along her husband Hooshang Touzi were trying to rejuvenate their acting and theatre directing careers and needed actors. Unfortunately I wasn’t in that particular play. I had a nice cup of tea with her at home and watched their rehearsals. She later became an Oscar nominee for Best supporting actress in “House of Sand and fog”.
