Tell All The Truth But Tell It Slant

Abstract

Tell All The Truth But Tell It Slant is an exhibition of sculpture and drawings that focuses attention on the socio-political turmoil brought about by the ruling system in Iran. It also speaks to a shared melancholia in those who self-identify as Iranian. In Iran the oppressive regime continually and deliberately controls its citizens through enforcement of restrictive religious ideology. As a female artist of Iranian descent, using Karen Barad’s notion of agential realism, I seek to address power structures, and hegemonic systems of domination, while questioning dualisms and the sharp boundaries they produce that further impact power relations. Addressing life and politics in contemporary Iran, I purposely layer and fuse cultural and historical imagery from Persian and Islamic art and architecture along with contemporary images, ideas, and mass media stories. My practice accentuates the importance of materiality in relation to this political content by questioning subject-object relationships, and by revealing the agency that materials and spaces have.