Merhaba Ben Kapitalizm!

Merhaba Ben Kapitalizm!

 Küçük kızlarınızı Barbie Bebeklerle büyüttüm, bugün sizden estetik operasyon için para istiyorlar diye neden şaşırıyorsunuz!
 Çıkarlarım uğruna kocaman bir moda endüstrisi yarattım!
 İstediğimi de elde ettim, 17 yaşındaki kızların çoğu dış görünüşlerinden rahatsız.
 Ben Kapitalizmim! Bir kadının bir moda dergisini 15 dakika karıştırması kendi vücudunu beğenmemesine yetiyor!
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve bakış açınızı öyle bir değiştirdim ki, hırsız bir CEO'nun hayat hikayesi sizin için "azim ve başarı hikayesi" olabiliyor.
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve ortalama bir insanın günde 5.5 saat TV izlediği, kitap okumadığı, tiyatro ve sinemaya çok az gittiği bir toplumda alaşağı edilmek gibi bir kaygım yok!
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve Steve Jobs tabii ki çok önemli biriydi, ancak %1'inizin ihtiyacı olan makineleri 3. Dünya Ülkelerinde, ucuz işçilerle üretmekte çok başarılıydı..
 Elbette bütün kapitalistler birer "aziz" gibi konuşacaklar, tıpkı Bill Gates gibi, 150 milyon dolarlık 66.000 m2 bir evde yaşayan bir aziz!
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve benim yüzümden ortalık miras kavgaları yüzünden kanlı bıçaklı olmuş akrabalarla dolu.
 Her yıl 20 milyon çocuk açlıktan ölürken siz bir koşu bandının üstünde fazla yağlarınızı eritmek için ter döküyorsunuz!
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve benim yüzümden dünyada 600 milyon obez ve 1.4 milyar aç insan var!
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve Starbucks için kahve üreten bir çiftçinin oradan bir bardak kahve satın alabilmesi için 3 gün çalışması gerek!
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve Uzak Doğu'da 6-12 yaş arası kızlar 200$ gibi komik bir paralarla seks kölesi olarak satılıyorlar.
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve "serbest piyasa ekonomisi" dünyanın en büyük yalanı.
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve Amerikalıların % 24'ü eğer milyarder olmaları için bütün ailelerini reddetmeleri gerekecekse, bunu yapabileceklerini söylüyor.
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve kadınlara sesleniyorum! Lütfen birer obje haline geldiğinizi aklınıza getirmeden Victoria's Secret'a koşun.
 Victoria's Secret ülkelerine Türkiye de eklendi, avuç içi kadar çamaşıra 80$ verince çok mutlu olacağınızı garanti ediyorum!
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve 15 yaşındaki bir çocuğun iPad alabilmek için böbreğini sattığını duyunca zevkten dört köşe oldum!
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve Madonna'nın sadece Londra'da 8 evi var, ortalama 600 evsize barınak olabilecek büyüklükte.
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve Tayland'da Disney fabrikası için çalışan bir çocuğun Disneyland'e girecek parayı çıkarması için 55 gün çalışması gerek.
 Afrika kıtası dünyanın altın rezervlerinin % 90'ını elinde bulundurmasına rağmen, dünyada sadece 4 tane Afrikalı milyarder var.
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve Afrika kıtasından her sene 8.5 milyar $ değerinde pırlanta çıkıyor, kıtanın açlık sorununu çözmeye yetecek miktar...
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve siz pırlantalara bayılırsınız, Hindistan'da 1 milyon kişi günde 1.2 dolar kazanarak o pırlantaları üretiyorlar.
 Dünyayı sarışın kadınların güzel olduğuna inandırdım, bu yüzden Asya kıtasında 300 milyon kadın düzenli olarak beyazlatıcı sabun kullanıyor.
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve sizin hayatlarına özendiğiniz Hollywood yıldızlarının % 64'ü kokain bağımlısı.
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve yılda 20 milyon çocuk açlıktan ölürken siz aynı tişörtü haftada iki kez giymeye utanıyorsunuz.
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve siz hangi tanrıdan bahsediyorsunuz, artık farkına varın, taptığınız tek tanrı benim!
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve siz hangi tanrıdan bahsediyorsunuz, Müslümanlar 5 yıldızlı Kabe manzaralı otellerinde, "ibadet" ederlerken?
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve siz hangi tanrıdan bahsediyorsunuz, bütün dünya Hıristiyan bayramı Noel'i sırf alışveriş yapıp eğlenmek için "kutlarken"?
 ABD'de 7 milyon evsiz insanın olduğundan kimsenin haberi yok çünkü TV'de gördüğünüz Amerikalıların hepsi havuzlu villalarda yaşıyorlar.
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve yine başardım! Bütün kadınları dolapları tıka basa dolu olduğu halde giyecek hiçbir şeyleri olmadığına inandırdım.
 Dünya nüfusunun % 50'si dünya kaynaklarının ve zenginliklerinin % 1'ine sahip.
 Dünya nüfusunun % 1'i dünya kaynaklarının ve zenginliklerinin % 50'sine sahip.
 Ben Kapitalizmim ve bankacılar benim evlatlarım.
 Amerikalıların % 85'i eğer ekonomik durumlarını iyileştirebilecekse faşist bir hükümeti seçebileceklerini söylüyor. İşte bu kapitalin gücü!

Johnny Cash - Sixteen Tons

Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man's made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal
And the straw boss said "Well, a-bless my soul"
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
I was born one mornin', it was drizzlin' rain
Fightin' and trouble are my middle name
I was raised in the canebrake by an ol' mama lion
Cain't no-a high-toned woman make me walk the line
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
If you see me comin', better step aside
A lotta men didn't, a lotta men died
One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one don't a-get you
Then the left one will
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go

meçhul öğrenci anıtı

ece ayhan

    buraya bakın, burada, bu kara mermerin altında
    bir teneffüs daha yaşasaydı
    tabiattan tahtaya kalkacak bir çocuk gömülüdür
    devlet dersinde öldürülmüştür

    devletin ve tabiatın ortak ve yanlış sorusu şuydu:
    -maveraünnehir nereye dökülür?
    en arka sırada bir parmağın tek ve doğru karşılığı:
    -solgun bir halk çocukları ayaklanmasının kalbine!dir.

    bu ölümü de bastırmak için boynuna mekik oyalı mor
    bir yazma bağlayan eski eskici babası yazmıştır:
    yani ki onu oyuncakları olduğuna inandırmıştım

    o günden böyle asker kaputu giyip gizli bir geyik
    yavrusunu emziren gece çamaşırcısı anası yazdırmıştır:
    ah ki oğlumun emeğini eline verdiler

    arkadaşları zakkumlarla örmüşlerdir şu şiiri:
    aldırma 128! intiharın parasız yatılı küçük zabit okullarında
    her çocuğun kalbinde kendinden daha büyük bir çocuk vardır
    bütün sınıf sana çocuk bayramlarında zarfsız kuşlar gönderecek.

Photographer Oded Balilty

“Oded Balilty is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Israeli photographer. Born and raised in Jerusalem, he began his career as a photographer for the Israeli army magazine Bamahane. In 2002, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising, he joined The Associated Press. In 2007, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his photograph of a lone Jewish settler confronting Israeli security officers during the evacuation of a West Bank settlement outpost. He is the first and only Israeli photographer to receive the Pulitzer Prize. From 2007-2008, he was based in Beijing for AP. Balilty lives in Tel Aviv and photographs current events and documentary features for AP in Israel, the Palestinian Territories, and around the world”. – Wikipedia

An Ultra-Orthodox Jewish girl wears a plastic cover to protect her from the smoke as others burn leavened items in a final preparation before the Passover holiday, in Jerusalem, Wednesday, April 8, 2009. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

Nuns of the congregation of Mother Teresa of Calcuta pray inside the Grotto, on the site where Christians believe Jesus was born, within the Church of the Nativity in the West Bank town of Bethlehem Friday, December 23, 2005. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

Israeli troops operate in the northern Gaza Strip Friday, July 7, 2006. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

A Palestinian youth uses a sling-shot to hurl a stone at Israel soldiers during a demonstration against the construction of Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank town of Bil'in, Friday, October 21, 2005. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

A gust of wind blows a nun's veil as she stands in front of St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Thursday, March 14, 2013. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

 

A Jewish settler struggles with an Israeli security officer during clashes that erupted as authorities evacuated the West Bank settlement outpost of Amona, east of the Palestinian town of Ramallah, in this February 1, 2006, file photo. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

An Israeli Arab man swims with a horse in the Mediterranean Sea off the beach in Tel Aviv, Israel, the third day of Eid al-Fitr, Tuesday, August 21, 2012. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

Ultra-Orthodox Jews of the Hassidic sect Vizhnitz gather on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean sea as they participate in a Tashlich ceremony in Herzeliya, Israel, Thursday, September 12, 2013. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

Ultra-Orthodox Jews stand next to bonfires during Lag Ba'Omer celebrations to commemorate the end of a plague said to have decimated Jews in Roman times, in Bnei Brak, Israel, Wednesday, May 9, 2012. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

In this December 6, 2012 photo, an employee of the Mizra pork factory poses with a pig's head in a refrigerated warehouse in Kibbutz Mizra, northern Israel. The million-strong Soviet immigrant community has increased customer demand for pork in the country, a non-kosher food rarely eaten by Israeli Jews. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

Ukrainian students try on gas masks as part of a safety drill in a school in Rudniya, just outside the Chernobyl contamination zone, Monday, April 3, 2006. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

Ultra-orthodox Jewish men pray as they gather for the mourning ritual of Tisha B'Av at the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, in Jerusalem's Old City, early Sunday, July 29, 2012. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

A costume shop employee, dressed as batman, pulls a cart with a mannequin to advertise the shop, ahead of the upcoming Jewish holiday of Purim, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sunday, February 10, 2013. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

A woman mourns over the body of her relative in Hanwang town, in China's southwest Sichuan province, on Friday, May 16, 2008. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

An Ultra Orthodox Jewish man seen through a net during Siyum Ha’Shas, a celebration marking the completion of the learning cycle of the Babylonian Talmud, a collection of oral Jewish laws and traditions passed down from generation to generation, in Jerusalem, Tuesday, July 31, 2012. Each of the Talmud’s 2711 pages is studied in sequence, one day at a time, in a process that lasts about of a seven and a half years. More than 10,000 people attended in the event. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

Marquez'den sevenlerine veda mektubu

Durumu ağırlaşan Kolombiyalı ünlü yazar Gabriel Garcia Marquez sevenlerine veda mektubu yolladı.

Cumhuriyet.com.tr

Yayınlanma tarihi: 19 Mart 2014 Çarşamba

İşte Marquez'in duygu yüklü o veda mektubu
"Tanrı bir an için paçavradan bebek olduğumu unutup can vererek beni ödüllendirse, aklımdan geçen her şeyi dile getiremeyebilirdim, ama en azından dile getirdiklerimi ayrıntısıyla aklımdan geçirir ve düşünürdüm. Eşyaların maddi yönlerine değil anlamlarına değer verirdim. Az uyur, çok rüya görür, gözümü yumduğum her dakikada, 60 saniye boyunca ışığı yitirdiğimi düşünürdüm. İnsan aşktan vazgeçerse yaşlanır. Başkaları durduğu zaman yürümeye devam ederdim. Başkaları uyurken uyanık kalmaya gayret ederdim. Başkaları konuşurken dinler, çikolatalı dondurmanın tadından zevk almaya bakardım. Eğer Tanrı bana birazcık can verse, basit giyinir, yüzümü güneşe çevirir, sadece vücudumu değil, ruhumu da tüm çıplaklığıyla açardım. Tanrım, eğer bir kalbim olsaydı nefretimi buzun üzerine kazır ve güneşin göstermesini beklerdim. Gökyüzündeki aya, yıldızlar boyunca Van Gogh resimleri çizer, Benedetti şiirleri okur ve serenatlar söylerdim. Gözyaşlarımla gülleri sular, vücuduma batan dikenlerinin acısını hissederek dudak kırmızısı taç yapraklarından öpmek isterdim. Tanrım bir yudumluk yaşamım olsaydı… Gün geçmesin ki, karşılaştığım tüm insanlara onları sevdiğimi söylemeyeyim. Tüm kadın ve erkekleri, en sevdiğim insanlar oldukları konusunda birer birer ikna ederdim. Ve aşk içinde yaşardım. Erkeklere, yaşlandıkları zaman aşkı bırakmalarının ne kadar yanlış olduğunu anlatırdım. Çünkü insan aşkı bırakınca yaşlanr. Çocuklara kanat verirdim. Ama uçmayı kendi başlarına öğrenmelerine olanak sağlardım. Yaşlılara ise ölümün yaşlanma ile değil unutma ile geldiğini öğretirdim. Ey insanlar! Sizlerden ne kadar da çok şey öğrenmişim. Tüm insanların, mutluluğun gerçekleri görmekte saklı olduğunu bilmeden, dağların zirvesinde yaşamak istediğini öğrendim. Yeni doğan küçük bir bebeğin, babasının parmağını sıkarken aslında onu kendisine sonsuza dek kelepçeyle mahkûm ettiğini öğrendim. Sizlerden çok şey öğrendim. Ama bu öğrendiklerim pek işe yaramayacak. Çünkü hepsini bir çantaya kilitledim. Mutsuz bir şekilde… Artık ölebilir miyim?"

Márquez kimdir

Tam adı, Gabriel José de la Conciliación García Márquez'dir. 6 Mart, 1927’de Kolombiya'nın Aracataca kentinde doğdu.Hukuk ve gazetecilik öğrenimini yarım bıraktı. 1940’lardan başlayarak uzun yıllar gazetecilik yaptı. Öykü yazmaya 1940’ların sonlarında başladı.
Yayınlanan ilk önemli yapıtı Yaprak Fırtınası idi. 1961 de yayınlanan Albaya Mektup Yazan Kimse Yok adlı romanını, Hanım Ana’nın Cenaze Töreni(1962) adlı öykü kitabı ve Kötü Saatte(1962) izledi. Yazar en tanınmış romanı Yüzyıllık Yalnızlık’ı(1967) Meksika’ya ilk gidişinde yazdı. Yüzyıllık Yalnızlık’taki bir bölümden etkilenerek yazdığı öykülerini İyi Kalpli Erendina(1972) adlı kitapta toplayan yazar daha sonra sırasıyla Mavi Bir Köpeğin Gözleri (1972), Başkan Babamızın Sonbaharı (1975), Kırmızı Pazartesi (1981), Kolera Günlerinde Aşk (1985), Labirentindeki General (1989) yayınladı. Yazarın Türkiye’de yayınlanan diğer kitapları arasında Bir Kayıp Denizci, Sevgiden Öte Sürekli Ölüm, Aşk ve Öbür Cinler, Şili de Gizlice, On İki Gezici Öykü ve Bir Kaçırılma Öykü ile Benim Hüzünlü Orospularım (2004) sayılabilir. 2005 itibarı ile Ciudad de Mexico'da yaşıyor.

Egypt: Face to Face

Yasmine El Rashidi

Shirin Neshat/Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels Shirin Neshat: Wafaa, Ahmed, and Mona, from her “Our House Is On Fire” series, 2013 (click to enlarge)

The phone was ringing off the hook that afternoon. A mother calling to inquire about her son who had disappeared. A father frantic about a child arrested. Journalists seeking comment about military trials and the most recent crackdown on human rights groups and activists. One girl—shrieking so loud that, despite the pandemonium around me, I could hear her voice coming through the phone handset on the other side of the room—reporting that her friend had been beaten in front of her by police and then dragged off. She didn’t know what to do. 

I was in the offices of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center (HMLC), a non-profit human rights law firm in downtown Cairo. It was the summer of 2013, and the country was at yet another political impasse. Disaffection with the increasingly brutal and autocratic policies of the elected president, Mohamed Morsi, had become so wide-spread as to create a significant opposition, and the various factions vying for power had reached a stalemate. Many of the incoming calls were from people who had experienced or witnessed arbitrary detention or other abuses by state authorities in recent months. But other cases—the ones I had been researching, and had come to the Law Center to follow-up on—involved more long-term ordeals mostly related to families who had lost their primary breadwinner during the revolution: a woman with two school-aged children and pregnant with twins whose husband had been shot dead. Another, whose only working-age son had been crippled. One woman’s husband, detained during the revolution and put through military trial on charges of assault against the state, had died in jail. There was an elderly couple, living on a pittance earned by an orphaned nephew who worked the streets, parking cars, selling what he could. He had disappeared without a trace during the first weeks of revolution. Another: a man who’d been blinded by the state’s rubber bullets and couldn’t provide for his family.
These kind of predicaments—the challenge of everyday life amid the tensions and lawlessness of post-revolutionary Egypt—are one of the main themes of Iranian artist Shirin Neshat’s new series of works, “Our House Is On Fire,” which was recently shown at the Rauschenberg Foundation in New York. Comprised of a series of portraits of ordinary Egyptians overlaid with hand-written poems in miniature calligraphy—hard to see, and then, almost impossible to decipher—the images disclose, by way of mere expressions, a reality to which the Persian poems speak. In the poem that gives the exhibition its title, “A Cry,” the Iranian poet Mehdi Akhavan Sales writes:

My house is on fire, soul burning, Ablaze in every direction. Carpets and curtains threaded to dust. Within the smoke of this raging fire I sob, run to each corner Shout, scream, yelp With the voice of a sad howl and bitter laughter.
…And the fire keeps on raging, burning all memories, books and manuscripts, all landscapes and views. Putting out the fire with my blistering hands, I pass out with its roar. As the fire rages from yet another direction circled in smoke. Who will ever know as my being turns into the non being by the sunrise.

Neshat is no stranger to upheaval and loss. She was forced into exile during the Iranian revolution, while she was studying in southern California, and as a result involuntarily separated from her family. When she returned, years later, she found her parents leading an acutely altered fraction of the life they once had; almost everything had been taken from them. It was a microcosm of the change and turmoil that revolution brought. It was, in a sense, similar to the despair that she encountered in Cairo, a place she has visited frequently over the years.

Shirin Neshat/Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels Shirin Neshat: Mehri, from “Our House Is On Fire,” 2013 (click to enlarge)

What are they to do, these Egyptians, many of them unable to go out and work themselves? For those who had lost loved ones in the uprising, how could they qualify to receive compensation from the state, which was intended to help the families of those who had been “martyred” in the revolution? Of the several thousands who have died or disappeared since 2011, only a small number have been “officially” declared martyrs. How did the government decide who was a “martyr” and who was not? When, in its view, did the “revolution” even end? (According to one government official, the “January 25 revolution” lasted only until February 11, when Mubarak resigned.) And then there was the question: If a family somehow managed to obtain the elusive “martyr” status for their dead loved one, would they actually receive the promised compensation? And if they did, once that money ran out, since it was hardly enough to last a lifetime, how would they then survive without the prospect of a decent pension or handouts from the state, without a chance at employment?
I’ve encountered such cases, and others like them, again and again over the past three years—at various human rights organizations, but also simply on the streets of the city. They are part of the Egyptian reality, of suffering and struggle for basic survival, that predated the uprising; in many ways it was precisely this suffering that gave such broad support to the protests that began on the morning of January 25, 2011, with its chants of “Bread, Freedom, Social Justice.” In a country of ninety million people, it has been estimated that 40 percent live below the poverty line, and a staggering 60 percent do not earn enough to cover their basic needs. Since 2011, both inflation and unemployment—longstanding national problems—have risen.

In a letter to me over the summer, reflecting on the protests that were once again gripping the country, Neshat wrote:

And then where am I? I’m in New York, blinded by the normality of everyday life, where the news from Egypt, even the graphic images of the protests, the crackdowns, and the bloodsheds in Cairo all seem so distant and unreal.

This reminds me of when Iran was undergoing its Islamic revolution in 1979. And where was I then? I was a young student living in America, involuntarily separated from family and home. Of course my only access to the torturous situation in Iran were images that followed in the aftermath of the revolution; the violent protests, the crackdowns, the arrests, the executions, and the tragic scenes of the war which broke out between Iran and Iraq, lasting eight years. From my infrequent contacts with my family in Iran, I tried to imagine their days, as they battled with an oppressive regime at home, and a vicious tyrant from abroad.

Shirin Neshat/Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels Shirin Neshat: Hassan, from “Our House Is On Fire,” 2013 (click to enlarge)

For the past few years, Neshat has been working on a film about the legendary Egyptian singer Uum Kulthoum, but she quickly became deeply engaged in the aftermath of the eighteen days that many consider the “revolution” itself. Not long before Neshat arrived in Cairo in November 2012, the twenty-two-year-old daughter of her longtime photographic collaborator, Larry Barns, unexpectedly passed away. While she already knew that she wanted to create a work that captured the human condition in Egypt, the pervasive sense of disappointment and loss she had felt on previous visits, together with Larry’s own tragedy, gave a different urgency to the idea. As she told me: “I knew at that moment, somehow, that we had to go to Cairo together, to work on this in a particular way. I thought that perhaps if Larry saw other people mourning, it might help, he could mourn too, with them. It’s important to grieve, you know, and I felt that Cairo was a place immersed in that.”
In a small studio on the third floor of Townhouse Gallery, a run-down yet dynamic space at the end of a narrow, working-class lane in a part of downtown Cairo populated by car-mechanics, Neshat invited Egyptians to come in off the streets and share their stories. There was no role-playing. No pretense. Larry shared his story too. “It was like a release,” Neshat says. “It was pure emotion, an outpour, these men and women and Larry and I. Everyone sharing. Eventually everyone would be crying, hugging.” As each encounter unfolded, Larry would take the visitor’s picture. 

The resulting portraits, which are large-scale (slightly over five feet high and three feet wide), were then overlaid with thousands of lines of poetry: these words were carefully inscribed onto the faces so as to accentuate wrinkles and expressions and grief, yet remain barely visible except in a magnified view. The various clusters of images on the walls detract from the space one might have hoped for to engage intimately with each face, but the instinct, still, is to move forward and examine. By her own admission, Neshat acknowledges calligraphy is often a “cheap trick” that is used to sell otherwise pallid artwork from the Middle East. In this case, her touch is so light, so deferential to the faces and the experiences they record, that it would be easy to overlook the text completely. There is also a measure of respect, restraint, in Neshat’s choice not to include in the exhibition any of the stories that her subjects shared.
In the years since 2011, certain visual tropes have become common in art dealing with the Arab Spring: collage and graffiti, for example, often featuring or made by young people and drawing on such equally exhausted themes as “hope,” “change,” “defiance.” But the people Neshat chose to photograph were all elderly, their faces already deeply worn. Neshat recalled her father’s face to me before he died in Iran: “He cried all the time from all he had seen.” And it is perhaps this, her own long history as a witness to turmoil and suffering, her empathy with it, her distant understanding of uprising and change, that makes this work so much more penetrating than much of the recent work dealing with “revolution.”

Shirin Neshat/Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels Shirin Neshat: Jamal, from “Our House Is On Fire,” 2013 (click to enlarge)

Interspersed between these Cairene faces—a selection of sixteen from the forty she and Larry shot over the course of a week—are large portraits of feet, shown with white tags attached to a toe. These images, shot later in New York, mirror ones that Neshat had seen in Cairo last summer, images that had emerged from the morgue. The tags, identifying the dead as morgues do, are also inscribed, but this time with details of the lives the artist imagined the deceased to have lived—the only real fiction in “Our House Is On Fire.”
The cumulative effect marks something of a departure for Neshat. Although she has worked “on site” in the past, including in Morocco, this is the only work that is grounded more in fact, in reality, than in an enactment of a fiction. It is also equally representative of men as it is of women. “It’s the first time I do something so close to the truth,” Neshat told me. “It offers a sense of relief, but it’s also very heavy.” 

Egypt offered Neshat an opportunity to create something real, almost documentary, perhaps for the first time since her forced exile. In our correspondence last summer, she had written: “Perhaps that’s why I became an artist—my imagination became my sanctuary, a place where I could be truly myself; a place where I could build a fictional bridge in between myself and my country…re-interpreting historical narratives which I’ve never witnessed but only imagined.” Her work on Cairo, is, perhaps, in its own way work on her home, Iran.
For those of us who were part of the revolution, who have experienced the cycles of hope and despair, who see these faces, hear these stories, in our everyday lives, “Our House Is On Fire” captures a reality that surrounds us, yet has been all but overlooked in the continuing story of the Arab uprisings: the reality of a country struggling with despair. That it took an Iranian to capture it suggests just how much more time Egyptians may need to gain perspective on the past three years, even as we are the ones who are telling the story. 

 

 

Remember Halabja !