Fariborz Farid-Afshin

 As culture and civilization are two of the most complicated words in English vocabulary, also politics seems to be the other most controversial word.  Likewise when the adjectival forms of these words, as cultural, civilized and political are used it is needed to explain each in the contexts that they are used.  Being political, specifically in contemporary art, entails different issues such as being local, detailed in ethnical divisions, having connection to history that all help to reveal the issues happening in a certain society of the so-called “global village”. 

In my drawings and paintings, the two issues of being political and critical on one hand and on the other hand being into producing emblematic pictures that are understood in the international art context has been the points of focus.  Mostly I use allegorical ways of depicting in my art works. The duality embedded in a picture is not a way to hide the meaning to make ambiguity, but it is a way to bring deeper concepts to a single image.  As Spinoza quoted “it does not matter how thin the paper is, it has always two sides”, which I appropriate it to my works that are shaped by concepts and meanings that exceed the simple shapes on the canvas. 

 If it is considered that we are living in a global village, first for me it is the best to rethink the globalization and second what the placement of minor cultures is. Thus the importance of bringing a local issue into international concepts becomes clear automatically.  Additionally if minor cultures still exist in the international contexts what makes a notion of a political issue interesting?

To elaborate on the question asked above it should be explained that lack of a common cultural space leads the artists to use different alphabets in their works.  When people, in the contemporary era, have portable identities it should not matter anymore to be Thai, Iranian, Austrian or American in the international art context.  But one can still track the national identity of an artist in their work; such as German artists who (mostly) find themselves judged on the patterns of their thoughts and Iranian artists seem to be judged with their resistance to authority.

My weblog: http://fariborzfarid.wordpress.com/

My webpage: http://sites.google.com/site/fariborzfa/home