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Shabnam Jannesari process image
MFA 2021 Artists MFA 2021 Artists: Shabnam Jannesari
Shabnam Jannesari

UMass Dartmouth 2021 MFA Thesis Exhibition

糖心logo入口 Shabnam Jannesari

Shabnam Jannesari is an Iranian artist and a MFA candidate at the 糖心logo入口. She incorporates drawing and painting to explore a nostalgia of distant intimacies in her life. She illuminates the plight of the Iranian woman, censored by an overreaching patriarchy. Jannesari鈥檚 paintings express her personal story, but they also reflect on the suppression of women across Iran. Jannesari鈥檚 carefully composed figures empower the complex realities of Iranian female identity.

Statement

鈥↖ranian patriarchal society censors female independence 鈥 restricting what women can do, where they can go and what they can express. Because of these rules, women must cover their bodies with a hijab. Nonetheless, many women are conflicted 鈥 overtly following the rules of their families/society and covertly fighting these limitations by pushing the boundaries and breaking the rules. Those who ascribe to cultural religious prescription, believe that women鈥檚 hair attracts men, and that a woman鈥檚 body spawns temptation and guilt. My own awareness of the effects of these social values is also personal: one of my friends was a victim of an acid attack because she was not wearing an 鈥渁ppropriate鈥 hijab, a heinous act that limited her mobility and resulted in social isolation.

To counter this severe censorship, I am inspired to channel Michel Foucault鈥檚 notion of heterotopic space and create environments where women can exist freely. Foucault writes, 鈥淭he traditional garden of the Persians was a sacred space that was supposed to unite four separate parts within its rectangle, representing the four parts of the world, as well as one space still more sacred than the others, a space that was like the navel, the center of the world brought into the garden鈥︹ (Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias). Their versatility allows me to construct an ideal, secret world outside of expectations and convention. While these paintings express my personal story they also reflect the life of Iranians and of all suppressed women. I address the complexity of Iranian female identity in the imagined space that departs from reality, creating a special, supportive, heterotopic representation.

Contact

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