My dear Shoora,
From where I live in residency —Konstepidemin, from where I shall donate my malady, this cancer of time— I took Västergatan, then Vasagatan and I reached Göteborg Art Museum. With my bike I turned and turned around a statue. Among the fountains, nymphs or mermaids, in the middle of a vast square, raised a gay statue of Poseidon. The modern centaur made lots of circles there. When I started the Odyssey-i project, I was persuaded that the only existent Poseidon was me or inside me. But what is it like to be the Ulysses and Poseidon of an Odyssey? The journey began two years ago and is still going downwards, not to Hades – enough with myths! – just downwards... if not standing still. My dear Shoora, the space between us was there, showing the way to four moments of my humble Odyssey:
The Portrait of the Artist as the Winner which I made with three other "self portraits". You didn’t like any of them.
Homage to Ahmad Mir-Alaie which goes, say, beyond the Odyssey and hopefully stirs its principles.
Masturpiece and Jxalq: I made the latter to tell you about the former. They keep blathering about the manifesto of this Odyssey, if you prefer. They recount that I have almost nothing to say and I am saying it distastefully. But isn't it better to be barren than to be aborted? Shouldn’t I seal these lips for the suspended words that cause the distance?
What can one do when the presence of the characters (a Penelope, a Poseidon and a Ulysses) reveals a truth about the journey, that the Odyssey is for real? But one day when I am back, turned away from the whole Odyssey in disgust, weary and speechless, expecting not to be recognized after the journey, you will first take my glasses off, for you don't like them, and tell me, "That wasn’t an Odyssey".
Your Barbad |  | Min kära Shoora,
från min tillfälliga bostad – Konstepidemin, varifrån jag ska donera min sjukdom, denna tidens cancer – tog jag Västergatan och nådde Göteborgs Konstmuseum. Med min cykel snurrade jag runt runt en staty. Bland fontänerna, nymferna eller sjöjungfrurna, i mitten av en stor öppen plats, reste sig en munter Poseidonstaty. Den moderna kentauren gjorde många cirklar här.
När jag började på mitt projekt Odyssey-i, intalades jag att den ende existerande Poseidon antingen var jag eller fanns inom mig. Men hur är det att vara en odyssés Odysseus och Poseidon? Resan startade för två år sedan och går fortfarande nedåt. Inte till Hades – nog med myterna nu! – bara nedåt... Den kanske till och med står still. Min kära Shoora, avståndet mellan oss fanns där, och visade vägen till fyra etapper på min anspråkslösa odyssé:
Porträttet av konstnären som vinnaren som jag gjorde med tre andra "självporträtt". Du tyckte inte om något av dem.
Hyllning till Ahmad Mir-Alaie vilken går bortom odyssén och förhoppningsvis får dess grundvalar att skaka.
Masturpiece och Jxalq: Jag gjorde den senare för att berätta för dig om den förra. Eller om du så föredrar: De pladdrar om denna odyssés manifest. De berättar att jag har nästan ingenting att säga och att jag säger det med avsmak. Men är det inte bättre att vara ofruktbar än strandsatt? Borde jag inte försegla dessa läppar för de avbrutna ord som skapar avstånd?
Vad kan man göra när karaktärernas närvaro (en Penelope, en Poseidon, en Odysseus) avslöjar en sanning om resan, att odyssén är verklig? Men en dag då jag återvänder och avvisar hela odyssén i avsmak, trött och mållös, utan någon förväntan att bli igenkänd efter resan, kommer du först att ta av mig glasögonen, för du tycker inte om dem, och sen säga: "Det där var inte någon odyssé".
Din Barbad
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Homage to Mir-Alaei |
Homage to Ahmad Mir-Alaei
On October 24 1995, the 53-year-old Iranian translator, Ahmad Mir-Alaei, left home at a quarter to eight in the morning for a date in front of a book shop at 8 o'clock, but he never reached there. He was supposed to deliver a speech at the medical college at two o'clock in the afternoon of the same day. But some people announced in advance that the lecture had been cancelled. At eleven o'clock pm the police reported the discovery of a body and asked the family of the victim to come to the police station and receive the body. The reason for the death was said to be cardiac arrest.
In Iran, Mir-Alaei is famous for his translations of Jorge Luis Borges' works. There, their names are associated with each other. His case, like many other serial murders of Iranian intellectuals, remained an unsolved puzzle, just like those described and left untold in Borges' stories. The translator reportedly was detained by security forces and taken to a hotel for questioning. A few hours later, his body was found in Isfahan. A half empty bottle and cigarettes were said to be lying beside his body, which had injection marks in it.
The photograph is a snapshot of a street in a possible Tehran, hometown of Barbad Golshiri |
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Masturpiece
Masturpiece, obviously, is a portmanteau word, made of "masterpiece" and "masturbation". The work is a possible extension of The Stone Operation by Hieronymus Bosch.
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In the midst of a luxuriant summer landscape, a surgeon removes an object from the head of a man tied to a chair; a monk and a nun look on. This little picture may not be entirely by Bosch; the awkward and inexpressive figures are perhaps by an inferior hand, but only Bosch could have been responsible for the landscape background whose delicately painted forms recall the vista in his early Epiphany. The open-air operation, its circular shape suggesting a mirror, is set within a framework of elaborate calligraphical decoration containing the inscription: "Master, cut the stone out, my name is Lubbert Das."
In Bosch's day, the stone operation was a piece of quackery in which the patient was supposedly cured of his stupidity through the removal of the stone of folly from his forehead. Fortunately, it was performed only in fiction, not in fact, for in literary examples of this theme it generally left the patient worse off than before. The name "Lubbert", on the other hand, frequently appears in Dutch literature to designate persons exhibiting an unusually high degree of human stupidity. The stone operation was occasionally represented by later Netherlandish artists, including Pieter Bruegel the Elder. This subject undoubtedly inspired Bosch's picture, but no extant version of it accounts for the funnel and the book perched on the heads of two of the characters, nor does it explain the presence of the monk and the nun, although their apparent acquiescence in the quackery certainly places them in an unfavourable light. It will be noted, too, that what the surgeon extracts from Lubbert's head is not a stone, but a flower; another flower of the same species lies on the table at the right. The flowers has identified as tulips and their presence is explained as a play on the Dutch word for tulip which in the sixteenth century also carried the connotation of stupidity and folly.
Walter Bosing, Bosch: C. 1450 1516, Between Heaven and Hell. |
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Jxalq
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Jxalq
The verb 'Jxalq' is originally an Arabic-Persian word. The verb at the same time means "to masturbate" and "to create". According to Qazi Mir Ahmad Monshi Qomi, a 16th century Iranian art historian, the term was coined by Mehmed Siyah Qualem, a legendary 15th century Iranian painter and inventor. Qazi Ahmad Qomi in his book, golestan-e-Honar, writes: And once this painter (Siyah Qualem) told the greatest of the courtier painters, Master Bihzad "all we artisans do is jxalq."
In the 15th century Gentile Bellini spent 18 months in Istanbul as "cultural ambassador" and painted his famous painting The Sultan Mehmet II 1480. Bihzad and Bellini have two similar paintings called Portrait of an Artist. To answer why the term exists in some Latin languages, some naïve historians came to believe that Bihzad has taught this term to Bellini during collaboration or a cultural exchange between the Ottoman Empire and Iran. Bazil Gray for instance believes that after the death of Mehmet, Bellini's Portrait of an Artist was sent first to the Aqqoyunlu Palace in Tebriz, then to the Safavid Palace in Iran. Before it was returned to the Ottoman palace this extraordinary painting was copied by Bihzad. The piece is now kept in the Freer Museum in Washington DC.
The Portrait of the Artist as the Winner
There is a photo of me after I received the 6th Tehran Contemporary Painting Biennial award.
Honestly, I made this piece to make a farce of the smile I have in that picture. |
The Portrait of the Artist as the Winner
Barbad Golshiri |
Born 1982 in Tehran, Iran
Education
2004
Graduation of painting at the school of Art and Architecture, Azad University, Tehran.
Exhibitions and publications
2000
Paintings, Afarinesh Gallery, Andisheh Culture Center, Tehran.
Publication of articles in Aroos [a women's monthly] on women's art and feminism, Tehran.
2001
Painting, "The Fifth Group Exhibition of Contemporary Designers", Barg gallery, Tehran
Paintings, "Hundred Works, Hundred Artists", Golestan Gallery, Tehran
2002
Paintings, "Hundred Works, Hundred Artists", Golestan Gallery, Tehran
Painting, Niavaran Culture Center, Tehran.
Photos, Laleh Gallery, Tehran.
Editor of the Plastic Arts page in Sedaye Edalat daily, Tehran.
2003
The 6th Tehran Contemporary Painting Biennial – Tehran Contemporary Museum of Art (Winner of third prize).
2003–2004
Research on Kamal al Din Bihzad (Bihzad and The Ruined Castle) – Under press – Tehran.
2004
Video installation, "The Incredulity of Saint Barbad" in "For Bam", a multi media group exhibition on Bam earthquake, warehouse near Iranian House of Artists, Tehran.
Video Art, "Turning Points", LeRoy Neiman Gallery, Columbia University School of the Arts, New York
Video Art, "Beams of Blue", Apeejay Media Gallery, New Delhi.
Video Art, "Beams of Blue", Sala 1 – Roma.
Installation, Joseph Dadoun’s studio in Cité International des Arts, Paris.
2005
Translation of the book, "Dan Flavin"; two essays by Michael Govan and James Meyer, Digar publishing house– Tehran.
Editor and translator of Samuel Beckett's complete dramatic works in Persian (Farsi).
2006
Video art, Gyumri biennial (Armenia).
Video art, Iran.com (Iranian art today), Museum für neu Kunst, Freiburg (Germany). |