Statement from LMDC after our resident artist Sadaf Ahmadi's recent work was censored in Sweden.

Basil G-Galloway

I first met Sadaf Ahmadi in Germany 15 years ago. She had worked on a documentary about women’s soccer and women’s rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran and I had written the first press about it while I was living there. We met again on another project in Germany by the same director the following year. It became very clear to me that this was someone to keep an eye on in whatever she did, regardless of medium.

We kept in touch and I had followed her work, and we reconnected by chance in late 2022, shortly after the death of Mahsa Amini and the beginning of the current uprisings in Iran. She had emigrated to Sweden two years before and expressed frustration at her inability to help and at the violence and repression that was taking place. Without hesitation I invited her to the artist residency program at La Maison des Chapitres, and she already had a project ready to create. This became her first exhibit, ‘Concrete’, which I showed at La Maison des Chapitres and which went on to international acclaim and a major show in Paris, as well as a future show at Kultushuset in Boras, Sweden, her new home town. During this exhibit she also teased her next idea, displaying one concrete statue of a women in a chadoor. Sadaf returned for another residency in July of 2023 and further developed the concept of what would come to be called ‘Settings’, a room full of hanging, concreted figures in chadors. They were ghostly, almost just a wisp of air. Visually, it took my breath away, and conceptually it connected deeply with everyone who saw it. I realised I was seeing a light speed evolution of her work- her first two shows in one year, and ‘Setting’ was just as well received. It was also very widely written about, and was incorporated into the upcoming show in her new Swedish hometown.

I can’t say strongly enough how proud I was to work with and support Sadaf and her poignant, personal work. It’s devastating simplicity, the theatricality of it, the minimalism, the power- I knew that something special was being made and the international reaction validated all of her effort and my faith. Fast forward to late summer and the current political environment in Sweden deteriorated, now characterised by unrest around Quran burnings and anti-immigrant sentiment. And things changed in Boras. Suddenly, ’Setting’ was too controversial to be shown in a public forum. The work, already commissioned and programmed, was canceled due to security concerns. The fear, according to the administration of Kulturhuset in Boras, was that this work would be seen as anti-islamic and inflame an already tense situation in Sweden between the muslim community and the rest of Sweden. If you actually see and understand Sadaf’s work, you understand that it is deeply personal, that it is about her experiences growing up and living under the rules of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is a criticism of an autocratic regime and the politicisation of Islam in her home country. It’s about what it’s like to grow up, live, and work as a woman there.

In my view the role of art in society is to express and to question, to reframe ideas through different lenses and in different ways through various media. To harness an artist’s creative power to express something – be it an idea, a feeling, a concept – in a novel way. The function of security, where it might unfortunately be necessary, is to protect freedoms, including that of artistic expression. It’s shocking to me that a liberal democracy that values the role of free speech so highly would consider that security concerns arising from a misreading of an exhibit critical of tyranny and oppression would constitute grounds to censor it in the public square. It comes as even more of a shock that the work would be commissioned and scheduled, and then abruptly withdrawn. As a curator, it’s hard to fathom that you would consider the opinions of people who won’t even try to understand the work when you decide whether or not to show it. As Sadaf has said, this is reminiscent more of what one would expect in Iran than in Sweden.

As much of a shock and a disappointment as this has been for Sadaf, it is with a sense of both vindication and gratitude that we have received a wave of support and offers for new venues to showcase this important and viscerally touching work, as well as a huge new swell of press coverage around this topic which is both deeply personal to her and relevant to the freedom of so many other people today. It continues to be with great pride that I support Sadaf Ahmadi, her work, and the freedom to show work critical of power and in support of human rights.

BT: Do it again and do it right Ida Burén!

Hanna Grahn

https://www.bt.se/kultur/gor-om-och-gor-ratt-ida-buren/

It is not Sadaf Ahmadi’s work that is dangerous to Boras or to Swedish society.

What is dangerous is when art must be made to conform and to be disarmed, when the discussion it seeks to provoke is silenced.

Art and free speech are critically important parts of a democratic society.

Thousands of words have been written in the media this week about the decision by Kulturhuset in Boras took to cancel Sadaf Ahmadi’s exhibit.

The cowardice and compliance of these decisions have been widely denounced.

The fear of reprisals from islamists is understandable and relevant today. It’s not the first time that an exhibit has been canceled for security concerns. Right now an exhibit by Lars Vilk in Hoganas is notably missing some of his most famous work.

The decision from Kulturhuset in Boras to stop Sadaf Ahamdi’s work is the first example of an art exhibit being canceled since the terror threat level in Sweden has been raised and the prime minister has called for ‘extra vigilance’. I wouldn’t call the cultural director of Kulturhuset a coward; rather I would characterise this as misdirected goodwill, or as an attempt to do the right thing while in fact achieving the opposite. It is allowing the awful idea that fear can rule our society. This can only lead to a dead-end that will be difficult to turn back from. The influence of Quran burners will only become as powerful as we allow.

It seems that the fear of showing Sadaf’s work originated at Kulturhuset and was reinforced by conversations with CKS. We know that the administration of Kulturhuset contacted CKS. Did they present the project and what it stands for and what it represents accurately and dispassionately? Or did they ask leading questions presenting the work as too dangerous to be shown for security reasons? These are questions I want the answers to, and the questions I should have asked when I interviewed Ida Burén.

One of the arguments for canceling Sadaf’s show was that it could be perceived as scary for families with children. According to security chief Rangbar Mohammad, the work could be perceived as offensive. I say so what. Give us art that affects us and challenges us and provides a nuanced view of the world. I can promise you that a version of Boras in which the only art shown is watercolors of flowers would be a dark and dreary place to live.

Sadaf’s pictures from the exhibition in Provence reveal a complex and diverse body of work, rich in possibilities for interpretation. Sadaf has told me that when she exhibited in France this summer the matter of security was never an issue. Children wandered among the concrete statues in the gallery and some even ran up to them and embraced them.

Now Sadaf Ahmadi is being interviewed by media from all over the world. Now there’s only one sensible way forward, Ida Buren. That is to completely renounce the decision to cancel the exhibition of any of Sadaf’s work. Allow Sadaf to exhibit the hanging women in Chadors in the entrance of Kulturhuset as you planned. We need this art more than ever right now.

EuroNews Culture: Interactive Exhibition in France

3: Exposition, Les enfants d'Iran

Alpes: "Brise le beton" du regime iranien.

BT: Min konst är ett vapen

SETTING PROJECT

A Reflection on Childhood Encounters with Ideological Constraints

SETTING

This exhibition comprises ten meticulously crafted concrete mannequin heads adorned with long veil-like hijabs. This artistic installation serves as a poignant expression of my early encounters with the political dimensions of mandatory hijab enforcement during my formative years in the 1990s. At the tender age of twelve, I began to grapple with the religious and ideological impositions surrounding hijab, a transition typically experienced by girls as they approach adulthood, often around the age of nine. However, my journey into religious observance had commenced four years earlier when I and my friends found ourselves compelled to participate in daily school prayers and adhere to a litany of regulation.

During this period, I experienced a profound spiritual awakening, finding solace in my connection with Allah. This spiritual elevation was a shared experience among my close-knit circle of friends. Paradoxically, as I ascended spiritually, I found myself increasingly bound by a web of rules governing my attire and conduct. These regulations acted as constraints, limiting my freedom of movement and segregating me from my male peers and cousins. I became ensconced in an ideological cocoon, metaphorically encased in a heavy suit of armour, leading to a sense of spiritual stagnation. Consequently, my personal state of being seemed to mimic a state of lifelessness.

In my artistic work, I endeavour to articulate the demise of my inner self, an issue with profound humanitarian and child-centric dimensions. I assert that this pertains not to a critique of Islam as a faith but rather to an exploration of its politicisation. It is imperative that we differentiate between the two, lest we find ourselves mired in chaos. In tumultuous circumstances, fear often prevails, leading to decisions to censor art addressing pressing issues and critiques. Such decisions, I contend, are misguided and ultimately contribute to the problem at hand.

Sadaf Ahmadi

Cocrete Project

The Concrete project is a collection of installation performance art and documented footages from instagram direct posts‚ which shows a chronological timeline of uprising in Iran.

woman, life ,freedom

CONCRETE

It can be a building material we use to pour into any shape, a solid and lasting thing. It can also be a conceptual term meaning real or tangible. It is also what the Iranian government has used to cover the mass graves of tens of thousands of dissidents and protestors. In the new exhibit by Sadaf Ahmadi at La Maison des Chapitres, it will be a bit of all of these, but it will also be something that will be broken. Sadaf has chosen pictures of the people who have died in the ongoing protests for women’s rights in Iran stemming from the now famous murder of Mahsa Amini, transferred them onto canvas, and covered them in concrete. Every day, the visitors will be invited to come and break the concrete; to break the real, tangible thing covering the dead, and reveal the faces underneath. In so doing, the audience is invited to break down the idea that what is happening now is stable, durable, or fixed.

Aida Roustami was a doctor in Iran. Outraged by the violence of the regime against Iranians protesting the murder of Mahsa Amini, Aida offered to treat injured protestors without denouncing them to the government forces intent on arresting anyone who turned out to share their anger and sadness. Aida died in police custody after days of torture, presumably because she would not share the names of her patients. She is one of the portraits in Sadaf’s exhibit. Like all the others, her portrait is covered in concrete, a 30x30cm gray square, bleak and void of any trace of what lies beneath. But this is not an exhibit of one death, rather of a mass campaign of terror. Rows and rows of gray, concrete squares fill the exhibit. A mass grave.

Majid Reza Rahnavard was a young man who had attended a protest. Riding in a car that was deemed suspicious by the notorious Basij police force, he was arrested and beaten. Leaving the courtroom after his death sentence was handed down, his broken arm in a sling and his eyes blindfolded, he responded to a reporter’s question that his final wish was that people would play happy music and dance by his grave. Majid Reza’s portrait is also a 30x30cm gray square. But there is joy in his eyes, and we discover that. In fact, all of the portraits are joyful and beautiful once they are revealed. The concrete falls away and while the death and the disappearance are still concrete, so is the joy and life in their eyes.

Mahsa Amini was not an activist or a protestor or a dissident. Mahsa Amini ran a small shop with her family. Her death was widely publicised because she was a religious woman wearing a veil- and because some of her hair was showing when she was arrested and subsequently died in police custody. Her death became the spark that set off the current explosion of anger shaking Iran today. Everyone who has been murdered in the protests since can be called an activist, because they are activated. And they are activated.

An important part of this exhibition is joy. Irrepressible joy and desire for life and freedom. There is no resistance against death and pain without life and joy. This exhibition is sincerely a celebration of life and joy, albeit in a recreation of a mass grave. But this time, as we break down the concrete boundary that hides death and pain, we reveal the strength of hope in the face of incredible violence and repression. We see images circulating of Iranian women burning their scarves and dressing how they please at incredible personal risk, and we must understand what is at stake: death and pain, joy and freedom. These things are all concrete, but we can break the ones we want.

Sadaf Ahmadi is an Iranian-born artist currently living in Sweden.

CONCRETE ran from March 1-8, 2023 at La Maison des Chapitres in Forcalquier, France also in Paris in Espace des Blancs Manteaux The show will continue in Sweden at Borås Kulturhuset.

Basil Galloway