REZA ARAMESH

The vases in your installation are aesthetic, beautiful objects, which makes the underlying subject matter even more disturbing. How are the arrangements of the painted figures and the vases significant?

I use archival news reportage to create an intervention on the images, to create a context between contemporary acts of violence and the history of representation of the body in Western Art. By taking a digital photograph and removing a figure from its source site, I appropriate its form and eliminate the scene around it. Painted as a picture on the vase, the figure turns into an abstracted fragment, creating a space for the viewer to play an active role, engaging with the historical link and the critical conversation between the contemporary moment and the ancient iconography. I want the figures to act as a symbol, an archetype rather than as an identifiable character. And by using beauty as the delivery agent, I aim to make this complex relationship more accessible to the viewer.

How do you get ideas for your various projects?

An idea finds its own place when it finds the right moment. For instance, I was very drawn to Spanish polychrome sculptures every time I came across one in a museum or a church. When I saw the exhibition at The National Gallery in London titled The Sacred Made Real (2010) curated by Xavier Bray, I instantly felt the connection between what was happening politically in Iraq during the American war, and the sculptures in the exhibition expressing the religious iconography of martyrdom in 17th Century Spanish art. I went back to that exhibition many times and was so excited I decided to make a body of work in conversation with this aspect of European art history. In another project, I collaborated with non-professional models to re-stage reportage images of war and displacement in stately homes and palaces. In these, I lifted images of subjected bodies directly from news reportage. I wanted to work with male figures rather than female, because of the historical problem of depicting female imagery through a predominantly male gaze. 

Your work questions the way history and art are presented. What do you think is the role of a museum today?

Our public understanding of art history and knowledge has been communicated mainly through museum collections with their authoritative representations and displays. Most of these collections are held in Europe and North America, where the narratives on them and how they are curated, are very subjective and hierarchical. In the same way, there is an absence in vase paintings in the portrayal of any non-Greek citizens who lived in Ancient Greece, except occasionally a few paintings of slaves. Similarly at present, there is a noticeable lack of non-white artistic expression in European and North American institutions. However, there are exhibitions held at various museums focusing geographically on artists from non-white countries, but they can often sadly end up feeling anthropological as if shown for instance at a Museum of Mankind. In the twenty-first century, museums are still devoid of full artistic expression from artists with diverse cultural backgrounds and stories.

What would you like the viewers of your work will take away with them?

Hopefully more questions than answers.