a street post in Ann Arbor
Jenny Holzer, Selections from Truisms (1983), at the University of Michigan Museum of Art
talismans/always trying to ground myself with silver
Pouran Jinchi, Prayer Stones (2011, top) and Prayers Stones 2 (2012, bottom), baked clay and lacquer paint (source)
Bita Ghezelayagh, from the series “The Letter that Never Arrived,” 2013 (source).
“The Letter That Never Arrived” or Nameh-i ke hargez naresid in Persian, evokes an interrupted correspondence - personal, cultural and political. “The history of Iran is full of letters from outspoken citizens warning their leaders of the consequences of their actions,” she explains. “So, too, the lives of many ordinary Iranians, myself included, are disjointed but also enriched through distance and displacement.”Ghezelayagh rescues unwanted, often threadbare carpets from homes in the West, and remodels them as shepherd’s cloaks derived from their Middle Eastern origins. She washes, deconstructs, disfigures and re-conceives these textiles, giving them a new life and dignity by placing them on a stand, transforming a floor covering into a sculpture. “The carpets are themselves hybrids, composed of more than one decorative tradition,” she says. “I make them more so. My pieces may include fragments of different carpets of varying styles and provenances, sewn together.” She then animates the works, building meaning through layering the cloaks with metal charms and embroidery and giving them a “breastplate” made from her personal collection of pen nibs.” (via)
Screenshots from the trailer for Pedram Khosronejad’s film Lion Tombstones and their Sculptors, which can be viewed here.
Excerpt from Khosronejad’s entry on lion tombstones in the Encyclopedia Iranica:
“Lion tombstones (šir-e sangi; or bardšir, “stone lion” in Lori), a type of tombstone in the form of a lion, found mostly on the graves of Lor and Qašqāʾi nomads in the west, southwest, and parts of southern Persia. These stylized, sculptured lions stare out from isolated Baḵtiāri graveyards in many valleys and along the migration routes of the tribes across the Zagros Mountains, from Lāli in Khuzestan (Ḵuzestān) to Zardkuh, the highest point of the Zagros range, in the Bāzoft district of the Baḵtiāri region. Found both individually and in clusters, they mark the graves of unknown chiefs and warriors who died in local battles.
[…]
Stone lions continue to have an enduring significance today. In the absence of a written history, they represent one way in which the Baḵtiāris are able to celebrate their past. Songs and ceremonies associated with funereal traditions, such as traditional lamentations (gāgeriva), are extremely important in recording the events of the Baḵtiāri’s past that are related to these lions. Thus the stone lions evoke for the Baḵtiāris the memory of an idealized past wrought with heroics and wars, a stark contrast to their contemporary situation.”
Oakland Cemetery, Iowa City, yesterday.
Yitzhak Nakash, from The Shi'is of Iraq