Farideh Lashai’s installation at Art Dubai
Nima Sagharchi

Farideh Lashai will be showing at Albareh Gallery, Stand B5  

Farideh Lashai“I don’t want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.”
Tree, My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk

A great European master miniaturist and another great master artist are walking through a Frank [European] meadow discussing virtuosity and art. The more expert of the two says to the other: “painting in the new style demand such talent that if you depicted one of the trees in this forest, a man who looked upon that painting could come here, and if he so desired, correctly select that tree from among the others.”

I thank Allah that I, the humble tree before you, have not been drawn with such intent. And not because I fear that if I’d been thus depicted all the dogs in Istanbul would assume I was a real tree and piss on me: I don’t want to be a tree, I want to be its meaning.

Mysticism, truth, love, oneness with the divine; these are the spiritual currents which run through every fiber of Iranian artistic tradition. Richly endowed with panoply of spiritual metaphors, we encounter in Persian art and literature, objects and characters that allegorically exemplify various facets of universal truth.

The lover, the poet, the mystic and the tavern keeper, these are all wandering characters in a world of lost souls, subsumed by material existence, yearning for unity with the beloved divine. Meditations on the essence of these profoundly symbolic characters form the basis of the subject matters that have preoccupied artists in Iran for millennia; from the renowned miniaturists of Shiraz and Heart to modern protagonists like Farideh Lashai. In this light, the artistic production of these individuals is bound by a conceptual unity that supersedes the divergent stylistic manifestations of their respective oeuvres, a sentiment echoed in the above quote from My Name is Red, by Orhan Pamuk.

The master miniaturist, a veritable mystic in his own right, when he brings to life the great Myths of Leyli and Majnun or Khosrow and Shirin, does so with the aim of relating numinous mystical concepts such as the souls yearning for a transcendental beloved, and as such, the visual language of the miniaturist becomes secondary to his conceptual agenda, demonstrating the power of meaning over appearance. As such, whether we are face to face with the delicate and precise miniature works of medieval manuscript illuminators, or the wholly abstract, free flowing representations of expressionist painters, we are aware that these outwardly divergent modes of expression are irrevocably bound by a metaphysical artistic agenda which is primarily reflective in nature, and which manifests itself in a multiplicity of guises.

Farideh Lashai’s fascination with trees is a manifestation of this same reflective endeavor. She is by no means a naturalist, and her choice of subject matter extends far beyond the physical entity of the tree form and into its conceptual significance as a giver of life, a timeless observer of history, and a living growing artifact of nature, as the artist herself states in her autobiography: “I became inflicted with the magic of orange trees and never overcame it. The trees took hold of me and never let me go, with thousands of hands, thousands of embraces”. In this way, Lashai’s work bridges the gap between appearance and essence, reconciling them both in an aesthetic that recognizes both visual beauty and reflective content, and one whose humor and buoyancy provides a satirical edge to an otherwise profound subject matter.

Lashai’s tree is at the same time a manifestation of the Tree of Life, an entity defined in the Shajarat-ul Kawn by the great Spanish Muslim mystic Ibn-Arabi as the very image of the universe itself. Electrified lines punctuate her paintings and the abstracted depictions form a dense mass at the apex. Lashai’s tree draws the eye of the viewer to the ground, yet simultaneously, her compositions evoke longing for transcendence, euphony, and the spoken word, all objects with heavenly and ethereal qualities. The tree itself, therefore, acts as a bridge between the visible terrestrial universe and the supernatural, celestial realm.

In the present work, Lashai recalls the conceptual format of ancient illuminated manuscripts and places her trees amidst a scrolling textual background. The text reinforces the meaning represented in each panel and at the same time provides structural backdrop for the work as a whole.

Lashai’s present installation is inspired by Pamuk’s tale of a tree destined to enter the pages of a great manuscript, which is consequently lost and left as a solitary image. Lashai is fascinated by the multiplicity of potential meanings the tree could have been given had it arrived at a hypothetical destination instead of being purloined en route. Through video projection over both the trees and text of Lashai’s paintings, the viewer becomes aware of various hypothetical scenarios in which the tree could have featured and its role therein;

In one scenario, the Master Storyteller is lying under a tree pointing at another panel where writings appear on the wall: “Coffee is a sin, coffee is a vice”. In the coffee house the tree continues telling the tale of the Cross-Eyed Nedret Hoja of Sivas and The Giant who were both taking shelter beneath it. Nedret Hoja is captivated by the trees tensile branches, while the Giant Man compassionately whispers into Nedret’s ears: “Coffee is a sin, coffee is a vice”. In Lashai’s installation we observe the two characters hiding, their bare legs visible, while the Devil’s instructions to ban coffee appear on the wall.

In another scenario, we come across a villainous murderer, whose identity is known only to the tree, hiding behind its edifice. Suddenly a dog appears in the distance, it may be one of the dogs that roamed the streets of Istanbul and was attacked by the great cleric Husret of Ezmurum; or it may be the dog that accompanied the seven youths in the Surat Cave in the Koran. Yet, whosoever it may be, it had witnessed much in its life. The dog takes us from panel to panel and guides us through the multiplicity of potentialities entertained by the scenario of the tree. The dog comes face to face with our vile murderer; it then faces us, the audience, and we are left to wonder, is this creature sentient?

On another wall Qays, the future “Majnun” when he first sees his Lady Beloved Leyli is depicted in a jungle adorned with mystical birds from illuminated pages, while in the other panel his Lady’s countenance offers a pomegranate that bursts in her hand, its seeds falling on the ground connecting the two lovers symbolically. When night falls they fall asleep and in their dream an image of femininity borrowed from Manet’s le déjeuner sur l’herbe appears in Majnun’s embrace. The dog passes through their dream, recounting the story of their divine love.

Our raconteur then roams the fields of text, and hides behind the meaning of the tree: a thin golden silhouette of its edifice adorning the mantra of “I don’t want to be a tree, I want to be it’s meaning”. In the panel next to it Western and Eastern imagery are juxtaposed against one another. Edouard Manet’s le déjeuner sur l'herbe, a painting that sparked massive controversy after its completion in 1863 due to its depiction of a naked woman casually lunching with two male figures, slowly morphs into an image of three identically placed figures, with the exception that they are Eastern and that the woman who was once naked is now enwrapped in a veil. Amidst this metamorphosis, we notice several keenly observed cultural insights. The figures are contemporary people posing in eternal positions. The contemporary man in the middle becomes Majnun in another panel. In his dreams as Majnun he is embracing the image borrowed from Manet’s painting to which they morph in this panel. The Master Story Teller we notice is laying in the same pose as the poet posed in Manet’s painting to which it morphs. And the lady bravely looking at us is Leyli in another panel, whose countenance is a manifestation of the Divine.

In all the panels, the projected images in combination with the text and the paintings refer to imagery and narratives in Pamuk’s My Name is Red. The chapter narrated by the tree is written in Farsi in illegible electrified lines on one panel. Other references (central sentences) such as the name of the art piece “I don’t want to be a tree, I want to be it’s meaning” are repeated like a mantra, and serve as the structure and a form of surface treatment on other panels.

The work as a whole acts as a confluence of various meditations on the nature of artistic depiction, the contrast between appearance and essence, and the relationship between objects and their environment, all done within a visual makeup rich in cultural imagery and literary ornaments.

Ultimately, in the present work, Lashai goes beyond the realm of mere depiction, and instead provides us with a tangible sensual experience that guides the viewer through a reflective yet playful journey exploring the essence of the artistic spirit.

 

 

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