- Title
- Eishi
- Date Made
- 2000, printed 2010
- Medium
- Digital print photographs
- Dimensions
- Image: 20 x 20 in. (50.8 x 50.8 cm); Sheet: 24 1/8 x 24 in. (61.28 x 60.96 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2010.35.5
- Collecting Area
- Art of the Middle East: Contemporary
- Curatorial Notes
Yassaman Ameri is a photographer and multi-media artist who was born in Iran and now lives and works in Montreal, Canada. Like other contemporary Iranian artists, Ameri uses photography to comment upon issues of gender, exile, history, and religion. The series "The Inheritance" was inspired by a group of late nineteenth-century photographs, which the artist received from her mother. The photographs depict prostitutes, each of whom is identified by a black inscription. Using the computer, Ameri has framed the found photographs with colorful images of Qajar interiors or incorporated references to the nascent medium of photography in Iran. In doing so, she recontextualizes the women in fictive settings in order to afford them a new identity. Perhaps the series is self-referential. Ameri has clearly identified with a group of women whose profession alienated them from their own society. In a similar vein, Ameri was forced into exile from Iran due to her religion. This group of six prints from the larger series closely relates to the work of other Iranian artists in LACMA’s collection, such as Shadi Ghadirian, Houra Yaghoubi, and especially Bahman Jalali.
