Sara Rahbar
The activist-artist's work focuses on Iranian culture in the states and abroad and prompts the question: how much do we really know about Iran?
By Sheba White
Published: January 22nd, 2007 | 4:14pm
Born in Tehran, Iran, Sara Rahbar’s family left their native land soon after the 1979 Iran-Iraq Revolution, making their new home in New York, and opening a family-owned restaurant. Rahbar went on to study art in London, and for a brief time contemplated design, before following her passions for art and activism.
Rahbar now works with various mixed media, from photography to textile canvases to film, and in late 2006 completed a term as a featured artist in the Queens’ International 2006 Biennial at Queens Museum of Art, where she had her first room-sized installation on the subject of war in the Middle East.
Her latest group exhibit, Changing Climate, Changing Times: 24 Contemporary Muslim Artists, focuses on aspects of Iranian and Iranian-American culture that are not often portrayed in the media — a precedence that Rahbar is working to change through, among other projects, her involvement as the art director of the Persian Arts Festival.
Fresh from her stint as a teaching artist at the Women for Afghan Women Center and prior to leaving for Iran to finish working on a film about the changing face of Iranian youth (Nobody’s Enemy, http://www.myspace.com/nobodysenemy), Rahbar spoke with
A lot of the pieces by Persian artists in the Queens’ International Biennial seemed to have themes that vacillated between celebration and destruction, particularly with your installation, where entire rooms show the effects of war: battered walls and debris among the remains of everyday routines like tea time. Can you talk about why you think that is?
I like to address current events. I hate even calling myself an artist, because it’s not even about being an artist and creating beautiful things. For me, it’s about educating. I think it was Jeff Koons who said, “Artists are even more powerful than politicians. We have unlimited freedom of what we can say or do.” I take that very seriously.
And I just thought, “My god, I’m doing an art show — all this fluff — and there’s a war going on, people dying every second. I can’t just ignore this.” I wanted to open people’s minds up to what’s going on right now.
And I wanted to bring this into a museum — this clean, white space that they gave me for the installation, this space that’s very clean and pretty. And I was thinking that it’s not always clean and pretty. I wanted to destroy that. Not in an angry way but in a way that was looking at what’s really going on.
In your artistic statement, you’ve mentioned that you’re not necessarily looking to make a political statement with your work, but focusing more on this idea of humanizing “layers.” Can you talk about this?
I believe in human rights. I’m more of a human-rights artist. With the layers theme, it’s just my effort to humanize things. Sometimes we look at things so flatly, and I’m trying to go against that.
I was looking at this magazine, and it was showing these Iraqi kids with guns. It was showing them as if they were riding like they like it: “Look at them, they’re having so much fun, they’re growing up to be the next Jihadists.” And I was like, “My God, do you know how many layers there are there? Do we know how much he’s seen?” He’s seen his mother getting killed. He’s seen his father getting killed. He’s gone through intense, insane poverty and hunger. Just to see people get killed in front of you, people don’t realize what an impact that has. This kid has layers and layers that he looks through and makes decisions through.
Every time you go through phases of your life, that’s a layer. Every time something traumatic happens, every time something great happens, these are layers that become our filters: how we see the world, and each other, and how we see ourselves. In the end, these things make our decisions for us, these memories and these moments. We think we’re making these clear decisions for the moment, but most of the time we’re just on automatic, reacting from the past.
A lot of your work incorporates textiles, specifically with your use of national flags. What is it about these flags that inspire you?
I hate to say that cliché about being “torn between two cultures” — but when I was younger and I first came here, I was angry. At school, I didn’t want to get up and sing the national anthem. I remember my teacher going, “If you don’t, you have to get out of class. You can’t stay here. You have to get out.” I was sitting down, and I was so angry, and I was thinking, “Why do I have to get up?”
As I got older — and this is ridiculous — I refused to become a citizen. It was around 9/11, and I remember my mom was like, “Listen, you’ve been here for 23 years. They’re kicking people out. Don’t be stupid!” (laughs) “This is not an emotional thing!” So I applied. But I was always torn. I couldn’t call myself an American, but I couldn’t call myself an Iranian.
Also, around 9/11 — we have a restaurant, a family business — we had to put the flags up. If we didn’t, people were saying, “You’re not with us. You’re against us.” We were getting death threats, people throwing things at the windows. I was thinking, “This is so ridiculous. It’s just a flag. We’ve been contributing to this economy and living in this country peacefully all these years. Now we have to put a flag up or get threatened?”
That flag concept was always in the background, always in my head. In looking around me, I was thinking, “What is the American flag?” Especially living in New York and looking around me, I remember asking, “Who’s American? What does that even mean?”
You’re also the art director for the Persian Arts Festival. What is this organization all about?
I was looking for a platform to show my photos of Iranian youth and the photos from this film that I had worked on in Iran. Someone told me, “You have to meet these two girls, they’re starting a festival and they want to focus on Persian — not necessarily Iranian — culture and art, and just show another side to this culture that’s been so dehumanized and demonized.” When I talked with them, I just felt it was a great thing because they were educating through culture and art.
I went back to Iran, and I found some film artists who had never had a chance to show their work. They were just making these films and keeping them in their house. So we had a festival in New York and it was great. We’re going to do this every year.
It’s a wonderful thing, because as an Iranian-American artist, I never had a place here: an organization, a platform, or somewhere I could be like “I’m a struggling artist, where can I go from here?” We’re trying to make this almost like the Asian Arts Society, where we can give [these artists] space and guide them to resources.
You were a teaching artist for Women for Afghan Women (WAW) in 2006. What was that experience like?
[My students] were young girls. I would ask the students: “What do you want to do with your life?” Some of them would say, “I want to be a writer. I want to be a photographer.” And I would say, “This is how you can get into college: you have to start a journal, you have to get a scholarship.” And their response was, “Well, every time my mom catches me studying, she says, ‘Why are you bothering, you’re going to get married next year.’” And I’m like, “What!” I was so angry (laughs). I’m like, “What are you talking about?” And they told me that they send them back to Afghanistan, because they don’t feel like the Afghans here are Afghani enough.
So these 16- and 17-year-old girls that come here and finally have a chance, have to go back. This doesn’t make any sense to me at all! This is insane! I felt that there’s a lack of role models for these girls. There’s a lack of hope and possibility.
[Hope and possibility is] what is really being incorporated into the class at WAW. I’ve been teaching it now for two months on a grant through Queens Museum, but I have had to stop, because I have to go to Iran for my own work.
But when I come back, I’m going to continue, because I feel so attached to them, and I feel like I’m really making a difference. Just because the grant’s over, I can’t just abandon them. You can’t just say, “OK, you’re on your own. Good luck with that whole thing!” (laughs)
You’ve traveled to Iran several times since the revolution. What is it like going back there now? How does it affect your work?
When I was younger, I went back looking at it through a different filter. Now when I go back, I’m looking at it through [new] filters. I don’t have any expectations. I’m accepting Iran just as it is and just as it’s not.
Before, I would go back, and I would get frustrated every time. A cop would come and give me a hard time, or stop our film production, or stop me from just walking in the street, because they think I’m wearing makeup, or my headdress is too far back, or I’m laughing too loud. Shit like that would just piss me off!
Being in America, I don’t even question it. It doesn’t even occur to me that I’m a woman. I don’t even think about it. You go back there, and from the second you leave the house until the end of the day, you’re battling for your basic human rights, and that used to really frustrate me. That actually plays a key role in my work now. I used to go back to visit family. Now, I go back only for work. Instead of being angry, I take it on as a challenge.
Would you talk about the film project you’re working on?
My mother introduced me to this woman [Neda, the director of Nobody’s Enemy] who was doing this documentary film in Iran. She’s a human rights activist, she’s just incredibly powerful and strong, and she was just going in the direction that I wanted to go.
So we had one conversation, and I was like, “I want to work on this film with you.” And I remember I had no idea how to use a digital camera, but I was like, “I can be your film photographer.” (Laughs) I have no idea why I said that. So a few months later I called her from London, and I said, “OK, I’ll meet you there in Iran.” And I just showed up at her front door. I bought a digital camera and I learned how to use it on the plane over.
It was the best experience of my life. It’s such an educational film. I think it’s just important to educate people on the real Iran, because you don’t see that in the media.
Your work often addresses issues in Iranian culture. Do you foresee a day when that won’t play such a predominant role in your work?
I never thought I’d be addressing these issues. But this is the point in my life where these issues are coming up. I think, who I am as a person comes out, and what I’m battling in my head comes out in my work. And ultimately, I think it’s about subjects and things that touch me, and things that I feel I’m responsible to take on. If there’s something going on in Africa that I feel responsible for, then that’s going to be my thing. And Iran is so close to my heart, that it’s surrounding these specific topics.
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Changing Climate, Changing Colors: 24 Contemporary Muslim Artists, is showing at the Abrons Art Center in New York, from Jan 16 to March 16, 2007. For more information, visit http://www.henrystreet.org/ARTS or visit Sarah Rahbar’s MySpace page, http://www.myspace.com/sararahbar.
To volunteer or donate funds to Woman for Afghan Women, visit http://www.womenforafghanwomen.org/ .
The author, Sheba White, is a Minneapolis writer living and working in Chicago. Her work has appeared in Venus Zine, New City, and Reservoir.
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