Blog – Page 2 – Sadaf Ahmadi

AFTONBLADET: "Borås Halts Artwork – for Security Reasons"

The artist Sadaf Ahmadi is critical of the decision.

“It sounds exactly like in Iran,” she says to Borås Tidning.”

Sadaf Ahmadi has previously exhibited her sculptures, depicting women in the Iranian full-body veil known as the chador, at various locations in France. However, in her hometown of Borås, the same exhibition has now been partially halted, citing reasons such as the Quran burnings and the potential for people to be offended, as reported by Borås Tidning.

“This feels like censorship, and it’s not the right way to handle these important issues,” says Sadaf Ahmadi to TT. “I see art as a way to shed light on the issue of women’s rights in Iran. When you censor it, isn’t the same thing happening as in Iran?”

Opening on Anniversary

One part of the exhibition, a series of portraits of individuals who have died in connection with protests for women’s rights in Iran, will be displayed in the cultural center starting on September 16 as planned. This date marks the anniversary of the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Zhina Amini in Iran last year.

However, the concrete sculptures have been stopped.

Ida Burén, the cultural chief in the city of Borås, notes that the security-political situation has changed since the initiative for the exhibition was taken.

“It has been a very difficult decision to make considering the role of art and culture in society. However, it is a comprehensive assessment, which also involves the placement of the artwork in our cultural center, an open space where all residents of Borås can enter,” says Ida Burén.

“If it had been exhibited in the art museum, the issue could have been handled in a completely different way. Now I had to make a comprehensive assessment based on the fact that it is precisely in our open cultural center.”

TT: How do you view the perception that this might be seen as censoring an artist who wants to use her freedom of expression to criticise the regime in Iran?

“I can understand that, with Sadaf’s history and background, I understand her perspective on the matter. It is a dilemma as a cultural chief to have to make this decision. However, it is a risk assessment that has been made.”

EXPRESSEN: Victor Malm: Islamists Cannot Be Given Power Over Our Freedoms

Borås Cultural Center has halted an exhibition by the artist Sadaf Ahmadi. Victor Malm cautions against bureaucrats who conform to theocratic demands. Nygaard interrupted Rushdie. He was proud to have published the novel. He would never entertain the idea of blaming anyone other than the perpetrator.

Furthermore, he had already commissioned a significant reprint of the novel.

Moral resilience of this nature is uncommon. It is always simpler to abstain, to lack the courage to remain steadfast to principles, especially when the threat is palpable. In contrast to Nygaard, we find in Borås a cultural chief who has halted an exhibition by the exiled Iranian artist at Borås Cultural Center. Specifically, a portion of the exhibition consisting of ethereal concrete sculptures depicting women draped in full veils is considered potentially hazardous. This is due in part to the general unease stirred by Quran burnings and the concern that individuals may feel offended or hurt by these concrete-covered women adorned in chadors, symbolically representing Ahmadi’s own experiences of women’s oppression under the Iranian regime.

ARBETE: The censorship at Borås Cultural Center exemplifies the consequences of blasphemy prohibitions. Johannes Klenell comments on Borås Art Hall's decision to halt portions of Sadaf Ahmadi's exhibition, "Concrete."

https://arbetet.se/av/johannes-klenell/

COMMENTARY

In the wake of Quran burnings, thoughts of prohibitions loom large. It is tempting to assume that it only concerns the overt narcissists and racists expressing their hatred towards Muslims. I can understand that sentiment. I might even sympathize.

I, too, am deeply troubled by the evident underlying hatred of figures like the Danish individual Rasmus Paludan.

However, each time I approach what we might term blasphemy laws, an internal image is ignited in my mind. It is from the documentary “Nothing Compares,” where the artist Sinéad O’Connor tears apart a photograph of the Pope during her performance on Saturday Night Live in 1992.

She protested, far ahead of her time, against the symptomatic abuses of the Catholic Church against children. Against religious oppression in Catholic Ireland.

I cannot quite let go of the story of how the world turned against her. The jeers and insults she endured. How she was ostracized as an artist.

Stand Up for O’Connor

I repeatedly come to the conclusion that, no matter how wrong and how much harm the racist Paludan— who should be held accountable for his incitement without necessarily invoking blasphemy—commits, society’s foremost principle must be to stand up for O’Connor.

That’s why I’ve been frustrated by how casually we, pressured into compliance by Turkey’s threat of withheld NATO membership against a government entirely lacking a backbone, are leaning towards a zeal for prohibition.

A march towards censorship. From the right to protest against oppression.

Removing Parts of “Concrete”

Yesterday, we received notice that Borås Cultural Center is removing parts of the exhibition “Concrete” by the Iranian artist Sadaf Ahmadi. The artist was raised in Tehran, and the cement objects depict veiled women.

The symbolism is as comprehensible as it is unprovocative. The cement embodies the weight of the veil.

Culture Chief Ida Buren refers to “security threats,” “Quran burnings,” and states that the decision was “very difficult.” It should not have been.

This is the consequence of an unholy union between Swedish nervous bureaucracy, a government willing to throw anything under the bus for NATO membership, a dominant Time Law party with fervent hatred towards Muslims, and raging theocracies, all seemingly getting what they desire.

Resistant voices are silenced. Those who scream the loudest win.

Pauldan took over the room

The consequence of the current discourse became exactly what worried me. Paludan took over the room—O’Connor was silenced. For that is the doomed reality.

The discussion about Borås Cultural Center is, in essence, a conversation about where the path leading to blasphemy laws takes us. My answer is that it leads straight to hell.

The application becomes blunt in its signals to society, where nervous culture chiefs shut down—yes, censor—art.

I guess both Richard Jomshof, the Iranian regime, and Erdogan applaud the result.

DAGENS NYHETER: The artist Sadaf Ahmadi aims to illuminate the protests for women’s rights in Iran through her art.

Parts of the exhibition by the Iranian artist Sadaf Ahmadi at Borås Cultural Center are being halted by the municipality’s cultural chief, citing the elevated threat level of terrorism.

Sadaf Ahmadi herself likens this situation to the art censorship she experienced in Iran.

“When subjected to censorship in Iran, they say the same thing to me as they are saying now, that it is too sensitive for devout Muslims and too hurtful for them to see this,” she says.

The artist Sadaf Ahmadi left Iran to escape the authoritarian regime’s censorship of her artworks. Now, her artworks are being halted in Sweden as well, citing the current security situation after the Quran burnings, as first reported by Borås Tidning.

“It is very frustrating and sad, and I feel all sorts of emotions about it. Censorship is something that happens in Iran, and it is strange to normalize it in Sweden, where we have democracy and freedom of expression,” says Sadaf Ahmadi.

She recounts that many of her exhibitions and installations in Iran have been censored and stopped, stating that she recognizes the reasoning:

“When subjected to censorship in Iran, they say the same thing to me as they are saying now, that it is too sensitive for devout Muslims and too hurtful for them to see this,” she says.

Sadaf Ahmadi’s exhibition “Concrete” is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the women’s rights protests against the mandatory wearing of veils in Iran that erupted last year, and it also explores those who have lost their lives during the uprising.

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

Basil G-Galloway

https://chapitres.co/

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.