Golden Edtion

Golden Edition, 2003 - 2010, Acrylic and Metal on Photograph, #1, 30x 55 cm / #2+3, 60 x 120 cm

Some decade ago I started to cover the bodies and faces of females in fashion magazines, erotic posters, or ads with some black paint. I "dressed" them in a tchador, so to say. This was an ironic gesture in two directions: on the one hand towards a particular censorship practice inside Iran after the revolution that included the covering of female bodies and faces in the books and magazines of public libraries.... One the other hand it repeated the fear of the West to be "Islamized" and its conscious or subconscious practice to marginalize Muslim women in Tchador or head shawl by seeing them as victims of their circumstances.

For the past years, the Tchador as well as the burka or the head shawl as such became the symbol of an ongoing public dispute between the defenders and offenders of this particular "dress code" within the European societies, as well as within the societies of the Middle East that sometimes regard it as a possibility to express aspects of an Anti Western identity based on some blown up words from the Qur'an. The piece of fabric was over and over filled with meanings and opinions that in my perception as a result, its meaning as such moved towards zero. This is the reason for my Golden edition. Its gold does not refer to the precious metal but to the glitter of total emptiness, to the pure surface.