Negin Ehtesabian

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This is a project about Iran’s history and culture. How fabulous and ornamental this cloth looks from a certain distance, suitable for a decorative piece, and how horrifying it might really look like up close! reading the stories: all the terrors and cruelty in the history, all the bitterness and unfairness of the reality they tried to hide behind art and spirituality.

I called it Scheherazade's Textile (Shahrzad in the original Persian name) because it is what a contemporary Scheherazade (The mythical heroine of 1001 Nights) would have shown us.

She is also the symbol of nonviolent resistance and the idea of trying to understand and tolerate each others through talking, cultural exchange, and making dialogues rather than each part fighting and trying to destroy and defeat the other one. So that is what I think we need to learn the most in today's world, and always!

I started working on the cloth in 2016 and developed it until 2021, as an installation with a video projection on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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**2021   September, Has been shown on

             Critical Abstraction New Media Art show, University of Wyoming/ USA

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For the concept, I was also inspired by Naqqali, the traditional form of storytelling in Iranian culture, which is a traditional form of theater in Iran; a dramatic monologue performance of storytelling; They used to paint the events of a story on a single piece of cloth, combined all together and the storyteller would have pointed to the part of the image matching the part of the story he was performing.

All the scenes blend together and became one big piece of painting that might not make any sense as a whole, looking like total chaos or might have seen as a decorative piece usually hanged in the cafes or even painted on the wall; or the portable ones were being rolled when the storyteller was traveling place by place for his shows.

Also in addition to Persian literature, there were always referring to the Iranian visual culture, local traditions, and folk music. These storytellers were entertainers and also important bearers of Persian literature and culture while encouraging national cohesion and cultural pride. Especially because at that time a majority of people could not read and write and verbal culture was one of the few ways to learn about their heritage generation by generation.

So, these days, with the increased number of new generations who aren’t used to reading and prefer to learn via videos and audio or cartoons rather than reading a text, visual communication has become more important in culture and education again, and this is my Naqqali, using storytelling curtain, combined with video.

The sound effect I'm using in the video is a mixture of the Persian traditional theater (Naqqali)'s drums and bells and performance of the known pop music by Fereydoon Farrokhzad, singing about hope and uniting in the darkest time, called “The Sad Easterner” encouraging people to stay together and fight the darkness and not let their Sun die.

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***Read about Scheherazade's story bellow

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