Clerkenwell Green’s Frameless Gallery showcases artists struggling to have their work shown in Iran
Published: 17th June, 2011
by PAVAN AMARA
IN a tidy-looking corner of Farringdon, an Iranian feminist movement is brewing.
It seems an unlikely spot to launch a rising against the Iranian regime, but step inside Clerkenwell Green’s Frameless Gallery and transsexuals have a voice, women in niqabs speak for themselves and young women spill out their overwhelming frustrations at the constant obstructions that barricade them into domestic life.
Aras Amiri, the 24-year-old curator of the gallery, has been living in London for three-and-a-half years after leaving Amol, in northern Iran. She says some of the “provocative” work has been banned from Iranian art galleries.
“Eventually, we were able to display some of it at the Azad art gallery on Salmas Square [in Tehran],” she said. “It’s quite a famous place for displaying alternative work when no one else wants to take the risk.
“Nowhere else would accept it, because it expresses the oppression of women, gay people and transsexuals.
“A lot has happened in Iran. We’ve had a growing feminist movement for the past five years, and then we had 2009’s Green movement. There’s been a lot of change, and so a lot of new voices.
“But homosexuality is still illegal, people are killed for being gay, and so we have a lot to vent.” The artists did not have the chance to make their voices heard back in Iran, she said.
Azadeh Aklaghi’s Me as the Others series captures her working at a factory job, and then a few frames later she is sitting next to a dying man in the street.
“She uses set photography to show how women grieve in the current situation,” said Aras.
She believes the exhibition has wide appeal. “It can be interpreted in so many ways,” she said.
“People here will see how a military regime impacts on women and any other minority group, but it’s also great for the many refugees who now live in Islington.
“They have had different experiences since being here. For them, this is a connection with the movements people are still trying to start.
“It may be a different location than we’re used to, but now Islington is what a lot of us call home, so we are starting things off from here.”
Breakfast in Tehran runs at the gallery until June 26.