To see the tonic and joyful colors that characterize the new production of Sayeh Sarfaraz, everything is going for the best. The artist of Iranian origin, however, has not neglected anything from her critical point of view on the Islamic regime which has transformed her native country and which has pushed her into exile. She was 21 years old. After studying in France, she arrived in Canada in 2007. Since then, in a paradoxically childish style, her installations portray scenes haunted by violence.
The note of hope that now colors her gouaches on paper is inspired by ancient Persia, an idyllic world with which she shares the treasures of the cultural heritage. Beneath these inviting exteriors, signs of resilience and persistence, still points out the threat of repression by the authoritarian regime, which is still firmly in place.
It is also in response to the war (Iran-Iraq) which marked her childhood that the artist made this proposal to the Maison de la culture Claude-Léveillée, in Montreal, which invited her at the beginning of the year. to do a creative residency. The production month coincided with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which woke her up, she told the To have to, painful memories. This war, like the others, is blind to the suffering of the victims for whom life must go on despite the horrors.
Persian wonders
A set of colored gouaches on Saint-Armand paper constitutes the centerpiece of this exhibition presented in a room rendered unrecognizable; natural light enters generously through the windows, which are usually hidden. This openness to the outside acts judiciously in concert with a stripped down and elegant layout. It calms, while, requiring a close look, the works become dense with their detailed motifs revealing a rich complexity.
The series of gouaches – in continuity with a corpus presented last fall at Hangar 7826, in Villeray – affirms in very precise colored flat areas motifs evoking Persian culture, its pottery, its carpets, its precious stones, its jewels and its miniatures, jewels to which are also added the gardens, renowned public havens. The patterns intertwine beautifully, as if released from a wondrous lamp.
The composition is, however, fractured by black gouaches which organize much more fatal silhouettes, such as these free-falling dresses evoking the repression exerted on women in the Iranian Islamic regime. Persepolis is in ruins, and much of Persian culture is now expressed in secret.
Political tensions
Impossible to forget, the artist tells us more explicitly in another series of gouaches, entitled 40 years later. They were presented in 2019 at Adélard in Frelighsburg to highlight the arrival of Khomeini in power in 1979 and the horrors of the dictatorship that followed.
Whether she draws them on paper or deploys them on the ground with Lego blocks, Sayeh Sarfaraz recounts, with her motifs, the control and the necessary disorder inherent in power relations. The airs of play, and of celebration, brought by the works with their naive style thus deceive on the nature of the remarks. The strategy skilfully testifies to the effects of censorship, a concrete reality for one who, at the risk of her freedom, can no longer return to Iran, although her parents are still there.
It is of them that she still thinks, and of the generations before, through her works. It thus reconnects with their heritage and magnifies it. This shape, which appears repeatedly in various colors, comes to her from her grandmother and her collection of rugs. The personal story connects with the collective in another series of gouaches which alludes to the Museum of National Jewels in Tehran, which the artist visited during his childhood. Some jewels were strangely missing from the cases, giving rise to rumors about their disappearance under the Islamist regime.
The miniatures, delicately painted in black with the finest of brushes, lie horizontally under transparent cases, like the most expensive of treasures sheltered in a tomb. With makeshift means transformed by grace, Sayeh Sarfaraz forcefully conjures up prohibitions and takes us into an imaginary archeology as restorative as it is worrying.