A Thousand and One Interconnections: Exploring Experiences of Persian Diasporic Identity Through Contemporary Visual Art Practice

Abstract

My personal experiences of migrating from Iran to Australia inform my practice and perspectives on the notions of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ in the relationship of diasporas with their adopted environment. In formulating these issues, this exegesis follows a practice-based, exploratory, and interdisciplinary methodology to examine the multiple senses of place in the experiences of diasporas. I employ an allegorical framework in which I juxtapose Iranian and Australian elements, creating hybrid works of art where the final reading is greater than the sum of their parts. I accomplish this through an exploration of various mediums, including image transfer, body projection, pokerwork, and video transitions. I collect images, fragments, and objects that have authentic metaphoric meanings related to Iran and Australia. Through my process-based studio practice, I revise, amend, and adapt these items, placing them in compositions that suggest new spaces of meaning. I particularly draw from the allegories of the ‘Persian Paradise Garden’ manifested in miniature paintings, carpet designs, and poetry—among other traditional depictions. I argue that using traces of Australian nature and history within this allegorical framework is an effective model for interpreting ‘home’ as a ‘garden of contemplation’, and a possible means for translating cultural ‘interruption’ and ‘interconnection’ in contemporary art practice. Additionally, due to its central significance in relation to Iranian identity, the mytho-historical poems, and miniatures of Shahnameh (The Book of Kings) written by Abu al-Qasem Ferdowsi in the eleventh century, is also integral and greatly acknowledged in this research. The paradoxes of displacement—past and present, tradition and contemporary, and East and West—are evoked in the work of artists Shirin Neshat, Mona Hatoum, Shahzia Sikander, and Hossein Valamanesh. Through studying the practices of these artists and my studio works, this exegesis is intellectually indebted to the theories of ‘hybridity’ and ‘third space’, conceptualised by Homi Bhabha and extended by Nikos Papastergiadis and others. These theories propose that interactive and evolving spaces appear when two cultural poles collide, acting as interconnecting channels between the two—the place of origin and the place of adoption: in this case Iran and Australia.