Playboy cards 2006

acrylics and permanent marker on 54 play cards

Playboy cards

Since 2001, Shahram Entekhabi covers all female heads and bodies in fashion magazines, on Persian miniatures, postcards or in advertisements with the black veil to sensitise the Western viewer to the practical use of the chador as an ominipresent element of the every-day in his home-country  of  Iran. Ironically, he refers at the same time to the common practice during the time of the Islamic revolution in Iran when the religious leaders censored books and magazines  by  covering images of female bodies. In his recent project, the a covered the world-famous "Playboy-Bunnies" on a set of play cards and Playboy posters ,  humourly subverting the notion of the gaze and toying with ideas of so-called freedom and censorship. In his recent project, the artists covered the world-famous "Playboy-Bunnies" on a set of play cards.

My works in general deals often with question of seeing and being seen, with visions of my ownself and visions of others. Within the works . Islamic Vogue, Das kleine Schwarze, Miniatures, , him and her, tents and sacks, and Playboy. After the Islamic revolution, the requirement for religious Shiite women to wear the black chador turned into the only possible public manifestation of women in Iran.
At the same time, a censorship of female imagery in books and magazines in the public libraries and universities within the Country had also begun. As such pictures of uncovered female heads and parts of the body were either cut out from the printed matter or covered with paint in order to transfer them into the only valid aesthetics.
After September 11, the chador became the metaphor for radical Islamism, and, in addition, the symbol for the question of releasing women in the
Middle East from male oppression. In the series "Islamic Vogue", " Das kleine Schwarze" und "Playboy" that I began in 2001, I started - in an ironic and humourous fashion the act of mimicing censorship within my home Country to "Islamize" the Western fashion world through veiling all the female bodies and faces shown in the German edition of the magazine "Vogue", on "H+M" fashion posters and on a set of " Playboy" play cards and postcards. Two cultures collide in my work: On the one hand, the series remind us of the fact that many women are exposed to these obligations. Inevitably, at the same time, we think of the "black widows" that we know from the news. On the other hand, the pictures also scrutinize the often doubtful ideals of beauty within the Western world.