photo from: http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/middleeastnow/word-into-art/artists/i/tanavoliWho is Parviz Tanovali and why is he making these statues?
I just learned that he’s creating a statue to honor the people of Lebanon for their suffering in the current bombardment, but his focus has to be a precarious one, because “It’s difficult to evoke both sympathy and hatred in a work.”
He’s actually an Iranian expat himself who was once a cultural advisor to the qeen of Iran. But he ran afoul of Islamic rules in his work and ended up settling in Canada in 1989. He knows the price of extremism in the defense of god. Though he wasn’t physically threatened, he was intellectually strong armed and that, obviously, is just as bad. And he’s a guy who is steeped (as his PR reads) in Iranian tradition and culture.
So it’s not surprising that he wants to protest and pay tribute to the victims of the insanity. I haven’t been able to find a description of the project (which will premiere in…) But- what’s this? The new piece isn’t the only “protest” work he’s done recently. He did a piece called “Heech in a Cage” (Heech means “Nothing” in Farsi and can be used as a name for god) last year to protest the US-held Gitmo captives (2005).
Are there other sculptors doing protest art, I wondered? I mean like specifically against current events- ala the Greenpeace folks who attached a sculpture of a coral to a bottom trawling ship on the high seas, and the Korean professor who added his statue to an animal rights protest against eating dog meat (???)…
More as things develop...
PS On a personal note- I've begun an entirely new life in an entirely different world- that of Williamstown, MA. David has a one year appointment at Williams College here and, after much discussion, we have decided that I'll focus totally on my writing instead of blowing off hours each week on a day job. It's just a year, but I intend to keep up the blog regularly now that I have schedulable time!
