- Title
- Untitled
- Date Made
- 2008
- Medium
- Chromogenic print
- Dimensions
- Primary support: 29 1/4 × 41 1/4 in. (74.3 × 104.78 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2017.55.1
- Collecting Area
- Art of the Middle East: Contemporary
- Curatorial Notes
This print is from a series in which the artist collages and photographs popular images (now proscribed in Iran) commemorating the massacre of Imam Husain and his family at Karbala in 680. Such Shi‘ite imagery remains readily recognizable in Iran in much the same way that depictions of martyred Christian saints were commonplace in premodern Europe and are still well known in many places. Ashura imagery, as facetiously recontextualized here, is meant to remove any barriers between past and present so that the viewer can experience the events of Karbala in real time. Here, the horseman at right is Imam Husain with his infant son Ali Asghar, shot with an arrow in the throat while his father held him aloft pleading for water. At left is the imam’s standard-bearer and half-brother, Abbas, who was mutilated and killed while attempting to fetch water from the Euphrates.
- Selected Bibliography
- Komaroff, Linda. In the Fields of Empty Days: The Intersection of Past and Present in Iranian Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: DelMonico Books-Prestel, 2018.
