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Facing the Future: The Artistic and Diasporic Afterlife of the Iran-Iraq War

Facing the Future: The Artistic and Diasporic Afterlife of the Iran-Iraq War How do the cultural and emotional after-effects of the Iran-Iraq War influence artistic production among Iranian artists living outside of Iran? How do Iranian diaspora self-portraits act as socio-political memoirs? This article addresses these questions by looking at some examples of diaspora artists who through their art somehow remain political `subjects' of contemporary Iran, even as they grapple with the complexities of `being away' ­ if that is ever really possible. Keywords: art, diaspora, Iran-Iraq War, martyrdom, politics, self-portraiture, Tehran From 1991, when I first returned to Iran, to 2006, when my ethnography Warring Souls: Youth, Media, and Martyrdom in Post-Revolution Iran was published, I spent time in Tehran experiencing, observing and writing about the many ways in which secularly minded citizens were trying to forget, ignore and wipe out the visual memory of years and years of a war that turned Tehran aesthetically into a space of martyrdom and mourning. I wrote of the various visual representations that were intended to produce a martyr culture in Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, to maintain an Islamic public sphere and ultimately to create an Islamic nation state (Varzi 2006). So imagine my surprise in 2007 when I walked into http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Anthropology of the Middle East Berghahn Books

Facing the Future: The Artistic and Diasporic Afterlife of the Iran-Iraq War

Anthropology of the Middle East , Volume 8 (1) – Jan 1, 2013

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Publisher
Berghahn Books
Copyright
© Berghahn Books
ISSN
1746-0719
eISSN
1746-0727
DOI
10.3167/ame.2013.080104
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

How do the cultural and emotional after-effects of the Iran-Iraq War influence artistic production among Iranian artists living outside of Iran? How do Iranian diaspora self-portraits act as socio-political memoirs? This article addresses these questions by looking at some examples of diaspora artists who through their art somehow remain political `subjects' of contemporary Iran, even as they grapple with the complexities of `being away' ­ if that is ever really possible. Keywords: art, diaspora, Iran-Iraq War, martyrdom, politics, self-portraiture, Tehran From 1991, when I first returned to Iran, to 2006, when my ethnography Warring Souls: Youth, Media, and Martyrdom in Post-Revolution Iran was published, I spent time in Tehran experiencing, observing and writing about the many ways in which secularly minded citizens were trying to forget, ignore and wipe out the visual memory of years and years of a war that turned Tehran aesthetically into a space of martyrdom and mourning. I wrote of the various visual representations that were intended to produce a martyr culture in Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, to maintain an Islamic public sphere and ultimately to create an Islamic nation state (Varzi 2006). So imagine my surprise in 2007 when I walked into

Journal

Anthropology of the Middle EastBerghahn Books

Published: Jan 1, 2013

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