The photographer Shadi Ghadirian has spent her career challenging the societal norms of her native Iran, especially as they pertain to gender. This large-scale Untitled portrait, which was exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery’s 2009 group show ‘Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East’, is a charged, immediately arresting example of her practice. It depicts a woman gazing confidentially towards the camera. With its sepia hue, bucolic painted background and antiquated Qajar-era costume, it could be mistaken for a nineteenth-century photograph were it not for the presence of a contemporary vacuum cleaner, wielded by the woman like a weapon. Ghadirian directly visualises the restrictive, domestic role accorded to women in Iran, and the country’s societal tension between history and modernity. ‘The conflict between old and new,’ says Ghadirian, ‘is how the younger generation are currently living in Iran: we may embrace modernity, but we’re still in love with our country’s traditions.’ Ghadirian’s work, which featured in the 2012 Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition ‘Lights from the Middle East’, has been collected by the V&A, the British Museum, the Smithsonian and the Centre Pompidou, among others.
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