The color of history in contemporary Iranian art: intertextuality and its envisioned heterotopia

Abstract

ABSTRACT The desire to reference, interpret, assign value, reconstruct, and envision the past is a critical matter within any culture – especially when expressed in the arts, which always supersede the procrustean limits of linguistic constructs and transcend the iterability inherent in the semantic postulations. The shadowy references in the arts have always illuminated, after scrutiny and in-depth examinations, the contemporaneous cultural sensibilities and emotional conditions that may be harbingers of novel beliefs and perspectives. In fact, one may say with some degree of certainty that history as is selectively constituted and reflected in the arts may well portend the future course of a people. This article is an attempt to examine the intersubjective, subliminal, and conscious portrayals of history, whether as metaphors or metonyms, in contemporary Iranian art. In this essay the contemplation of history conveys a preference for the arbitrary, random, and often fantastic constructs of the past that view history as ‘his’ or ‘her-story’. This ‘Critical-Creative’ approach plays a dominant role in undermining all metaphysical absolutes and Truth-centered ideas, be they religious, political, or philosophical. The outcome of these perspectives and aesthetic perceptions may well presage new social and political structures in the future of Iran.