Author Marina Nemat, a survivor of Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, takes an emotional journey through the Aga Khan Museum’s new exhibition of modern Persian art
The Globe and Mail: In order to get to a new exhibition of contemporary Persian art, Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet, my museum guide tells me that I need to go through Syria first. She means the Syrian exhibition. My breath stops in my throat. I don’t want to walk through Syria. As a former prisoner of conscience in Tehran’s most notorious prison, Evin, I am nervous enough about returning to Iran, even if inside the safe confines of Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum.
My family and I have survived two revolutions: Russia, 1917, and Iran, 1979; my grandparents escaped the communists and I, the Islamists. From 1982 to 1984, when I was in my teens, I was charged with anti-revolutionary activism, tortured and raped. Many of my friends were executed and are buried in mass graves.
I somehow put one foot in front of the other, but the massive rock of pain that fell on my chest when I was tortured at 16 has become even heavier. It’s as if I have stepped into a haunted version of the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (the first English book that I read when growing up), one that leads to the grim realm of stifled souls, artists trying to create a country of their own.
I am sure that this exhibition is full of hidden codes, and I am a guide or interpreter of messages hidden in every display. This peculiar landscape I know and understand.
The works displayed in the Persian exhibition confront issues such as gender, politics and religion through quiet rebellion, humour, mysticism and poetry. The purpose of this exhibition is to shed light on the identity of Iranians today by examining the art that has been created by Iranian artists practising both inside and outside the country >>> More photos
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