a woman is worth a thousand questions.
Alternative Media from Iran
Mon Oct 27 |8:30 pm|
Tuesday, Oct 28 |8:30 pm|
Jack H. Skirball Series
Admission: $11 [members $8]
Presented as part of the LA/Islam Arts Initiative led by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
The citywide LA/Islam Art Initiative arrives at REDCAT with two evenings of powerful, eye-opening works that deconstruct and recontextualize women’s complex relationship with Islam in Iranian culture and society. Running the gamut from experimental film to video and performance art, from animation to documentary, the featured projects draw special attention to the ways in which women and women’s bodies are posited both within Islam and at its border, with the codes of sexual propriety, veiling and separation functioning as signifiers of a condition fraught with contradiction and hope.
The evening of Monday, October 27 will be devoted to experimental media, with a video performance by photographer Haleh Anvari, an installation and documentation of a public performance by multi-media artist Jinoos Taghizadeh, an experimental animation by Pooya Razi, witty, poignant, and visually compelling vignettes by Samira Eskandarfar and Nassrin Nasser and body art by Nikoo Tarkhani. On Tuesday, October 28, three documentaries focusing on the bodies of women and their representation will be shown: two shorter pieces by Samira Eskandarfar and Firouzeh Khorosvani and Loghman Khaledi’s award-winning Nessa (2011).
In-person: Haleh Anvari, schedule permitting
http://www.redcat.org/event/woman-worth-thousand-questions
This program is also part of REDCAT’s ongoing Jack H. Skirball Series curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud.
Launching this fall, the Los Angeles / Islam Arts Initiative (LA/IAI) brings together nearly 30 cultural institutions throughout Los Angeles to tell various stories of traditional and contemporary art from multiple Islamic regions and their significant global diasporas. LA/IAI is the first-of-its-kind, wide-scale citywide initiative on Islamic arts producing and presenting programmings such as art exhibitions, panels, discussions, and performances.
“Middle Eastern artists do not need heroes. They are tired of sacred portraits and they actively tear them down. They despise halos of sacredness be it based on religious, historical or political ideologies – even if they are based on traditional or modern artistic concepts.” – Jinoos Taghizadeh
If there is a thread that runs through [contemporary Iranian video works], it’s their self-conscious fragility as carriers of meaning. They invoke collectivity only to underscore its absence, and they hint at a historical narrative only to shrug off any shared ideals of progress. – Bidoun
About REDCAT
REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) is located at 631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012 – in downtown Los Angeles at the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets, inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Parking is available in the Walt Disney Concert Hall parking structure and in adjacent lots.