First Person Artist: Defiant Iranian Painter Abelina Galustian

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Poste d December 1, 2007 | 08:00 AM (EST)

First Person Artist is a weekly column by artist Kimberly Brooks in
which she provides commentary on art and the creative process and
showcases artists’ work from around the world. This week’s artist is
Tehran-born Abelina Galustian.

It has been six years since the U.S. congratulated itself for
"liberating the women of the Taliban", and one week since a
nineteen-year-old girl and gang-rape victim was ordered the penalty of
200 lashes in Saudi Arabia for the act she allegedly caused because she
was caught sitting in a car with a man who was not her relative.

"The Whole Story" Oil on 16 Canvases. Kimberly Brooks.

As an artist and woman growing up in the West, one of the towers that
fell on 9-11 was my view of what it meant to view and create art. After
the cascade of news stories that brought front and center how my
sisters throughout the world live in what I consider to be oppressive
misogynistic cultures, I thought deeply about what it must be like
where there is no visual representational art, where women are covered
from head to toe and not allowed to be seen let alone depicted in any
form, where billboards also have the female entirely blackened in
silhouette and western art history text books are considered
"pornographic". The closest I’ve come to the Middle East is relatively
progressive Dubai–the UAE has just made a deal with the Louvre Museum
in Paris to build a branch in the tourist-driven area. And even though
you can find a forty foot high image of Paris Hilton in the Guess Jeans
store at the United Arab Emirate’s Mall (this is progress!), outside
the mall there’s not a painting or photograph of any woman in sight
except for the framed photographs of the men who rule the country and
some abstract designs in all the hotel lobbies. It’s really really
strange.

Suddenly late 20th century notions that say, figurative painting was
dead, or that women were finally breaking though the glass canvas of
the art world, seemed quaint. So for me as an artist, the act of
painting figures, nudes – especially women – takes on another meaning
and also an act of defiance.

One step forward. Two steps back.

In 2003, an underground feminist art exhibition entitled "Women Talking
Back" featured work for and by women showed in Tehran. One of the
artists in that exhibition was Abelina Galustian. In her series of
paintings entitled The Veil Series, she depicts women wearing lingerie
and high heels along with the burka. The curator of the show was
briefly imprisoned and all of the paintings were confiscated
permanently. Shown here are photographs of the paintings which are all
that remain.

Abelina Galustian, Photographs of confiscated paintings from "The Veil
Series," oil and acrylic on canvas, 2003
In her recent series entitled Womansword, Galustian looks to classic
19th Century Orientalist painters. She recreates detailed photorealist
paintings reversing the gender. In doing so, she undermines the
traditional dynamic of the male gaze and the viewing process while
pointing to contemporary issues of representation, and the
neo-Orientalism rampant in the cultures the western world seeks to
"liberate".

Kimberly Brooks: Where did you come of age, and when did you start to
question what women were and were not allowed to do?

Abelina Galustian: I was born in Tehran, Iran. I am of Armenian
ethnicity and moved to the U.S. after the Iran/Iraq war. In the
beginning of third grade in Tehran, my best friend, Rama, and I would
eavesdrop on women’s private conversations [about their Hymen]. I was
too young to understand why young, single women gave the intactness of
their hymen such great importance. They shared naughty stories about
their rendezvous and extracurricular activities as if they were talking
about a sport – how they finally made the "touch down" without being
"touched down." These types of "coffee conversations" continued in
almost every circle and age of women I sat with in my cultural context.

I now live in the United States. During my last visit to Iran a few
years ago, I was sitting with a group of very wealthy, educated, single
women who said the same things I heard during my eavesdropping days. I
still couldn’t understand why they were all [still focusing on acting
like virgins.] My reaction to this hypocrisy was communicated with the
Veiled Series. It was a way of telling women to stop interrogating a
woman’s worth by the intactness of her hymen, as it only leads to
daughters performing virginity and sons who only accept virgins (or at
least they think they’re getting virgins) for wives.

KB: What was the spark that led specifically to the Womansword series?

AG: In February 2000, I was in a New Haven bookstore in Connecticut. I
noticed a center display of books about the Middle East. One book in
particular caught my eye with its painting by Jean-Leon Gerome entitled
"The Slave Market." Although I had seen Gerome’s painting on many
different occasions since studying art in America, it was at that point
when I noticed for the first time, the message Gerome intended in his
composition. Gerome who is a hyper-Realist and a stickler for correct
proportions, painted the hand of the nobleman who is purchasing the
slave girl, about three times bigger proportionally. I was so appalled
by Gerome’s symbolism that I decided to give a critical response to
this painting.

Left: Jean-Leon Gerome, The Slave Market, 1867, oil on canvas. Right:
Abelina Galustian, The Slave Market: Womansword 2000, oil and acrylic
on canvas.
AG: I purposely chose the Orientalist style and Gerome’s painting by
reason of its immediate encroachment to the senses. It was necessary
for this particular body of work to retain a direction of communication
that would be recognizable, distinguishable, and straightforward. The
Womansword series of paintings counterclaim some of the socially
ascribed roles through the switching of gender roles, a switch that may
at first be read as subtle but actually acknowledges a female’s
ownership of her body and debunks its male control.

Left: Stanislas von Chlebowski. Purchasing a slave, oil on canvas,
signed and dated 1879 (36.75 x 28.50 in). Right: Abelina Galustian
Purchasing a slave: The Womansword, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2002 (5
x 6 ft).
In nineteenth-century orientalist works, one theme that was given an
encore was the captive woman. The harem and slave-market themes were
exploited by various artists. The most distinguished and famous of the
Orientalist paintings is Jean Leon Gerome’s "The Slave Market" which
shows how easily Orientalism of the day could be combined with the
taste for violated innocence and female subjection. Since these chosen
depictions are almost iconic, quoting from them with alterations that
are explicitly construed as political, generates a double-take and
immediate scrutiny from the viewer.

A close-up detail from Galustian’s Purchasing a slave: The Womansword,
acrylic and oil on canvas, 2002
KB: What do you seek, ultimately, from your viewers?

AG: As a feminist artist, I seek to expose seemingly archaic beliefs
that are only loosely hidden behind the mask of political correctness.
Works that are tacitly looked upon as classic works of beauty and truth
in the artistic canon, interestingly enough, become works of
irreverence and perversity once the genders are switched.

KB: As an artist who also deals with female/male issues, I find myself
not wanting to be known solely as a feminist painter, yet you claim it
prominently in your description of yourself. Do you ever worry about
being ghettoized as such?

AG: No. Being "ghettoized" for being a feminist artist is not an issue
for me. Everything that revolves in and around my work stem from
women’s issues. But Middle-Eastern feminist awareness is not always
parallel to the West’s understanding of feminism. In my work, female is
not just gender but location, therefore, when talking/painting about
the female-feminine and male/masculine I’m also talking about the East
and West. At the end of the day, it is my work that speaks, not my
label.

Artist Abelina Galustian
Born in Tehran with family roots in Tabriz, Abelina Galustian
immigrated to the U.S. after the Iran/Iraq War. Here, she earned her
MFA in studio arts at Cal State LA, her MA in art history at UCSB, and
she is also currently pursuing her PhD in art history at UCSB.
Galustian’s work has shown in solo and group exhibits internationally
and domestically. Likewise, she has been a featured artist and lecturer
featuring her own work and topics such as transnational identities,
Neo-Orientalism, and performing culture in Toronto, Dubai, and
California.