Artemis Akchoti Shahbazi
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Picture
The triptych Sanctionwear seeks to make visible, simultaneously, the collective punishment and the culture punished. to highlight scars and heritage, and inquire the potential of humanity.

In the first piece (from left to right) The Rising Sun, the focus is on the Executive Order Reimposing Certain Sanctions with Respect to Iran. Out of the executive order rises the Goddess Mitra. She represents the warm, nurturing, feminine, and benevolent power of the rising star. Mithraism, a faith rooted in Iran, competed with and influenced Christianity during the Roman Empire.

The USA's sanctions against Iran have an overwhelming impact on access to medicines and health. The second dress Becoming Immortal intends to be a eulogy to Avicenna's (Ibn Sina) ability to cure patients even after his physical death. In this way, Avicenna reached immortality, overcoming the fear of extinction. Avicenna was an Iranian polymath and his Canon of Medicine was used as a standard medical textbook in the West up to the 18th Century. The dress is  composed of The World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines overlapping with the USA's sanctions against Iran. Avicenna is recomposed with the list of local anesthetics found in the model list and supersedes the Model List.

The third dress, A glass of wine, was inspired by Omar Khayyam.  A glass of red wine was poured over the Travel Ban and, Omar Khayyam's verse this moment is your life  is written over it. Nowness powerfully releases fearlessness. Through the practice of nowness Khayyam frees himself, and us, from the fear of Government(s), God(s) and Death.  Omar Khayyam, too, was Iranian and his poetry widely known in the West.

In Sanctionwear, the collective punishment continues to exist but also transforms, and other realities overlap. We wear the sequel of these punishments and their transformations, the basic goodness of the rising sun,  the fearlessness released by the power of now, and the potential of immortality. ​

                                                                                      __________________

Copyright © Artemis Akchoti Shahbazi 2013-2022
​All rights reserved
  • Home
  • Mythology & Travelogues
    • Other kings... Other stories...
    • Wooden Books
    • A dynasty in Perspective
    • XIX-XX century travelogues
  • Worldbuilding Experiments
    • Blog
    • The Matrix of Human Identity
    • Sanctionwear
    • Ways of Seeing Iran and the Arab World
    • Democracy to Revolution >
      • Democracy to revolution
      • A (very) brief (hi)Story of Revolutions
      • (R)Evolution
      • Democracy
    • Memories of East & West
    • The story lines
  • Curatorial Projects
    • The Impermanence Platform >
      • Curatorial Projects
    • Videos
    • Raafat Majzoub: Grounds
    • Identities in Movement
  • About
    • News
    • PRESS
  • Contact