Review Of “in” On Discerning Eye
THE SELFIE BECOMES A FORM OF CONFESSIONAL in Hosna Shahramipoor's D.C. Arts Center exhibition. The Washington artist, who in 2017 emigrated from Tehran to the U.S., transforms photographic self-portraits into semi-sculptural meditations. The show is titled "in." because many of the wood-based pieces involve a sort of psychic surgery. The images are opened up -- split, carved, or ripped -- to suggest a personality that -- like everyone's -- is fractured.
Some of the incisions may indicate the divides that come from being Persian (the artist's term) in a foreign and not always friendly land. But the show, which was curated by Briget Heidmous, illustrates other kinds of fissures. A portrait in which Shahramipoor reveals her pregnant belly is partly ripped open, hinting at both physical pain and a psychological void. "Duality" splits the artist's face vertically, leaving a narrow gap through which a flicker of her submerged eye peers out alarmingly.
Not all the scenarios are autobiographical. The artist poses as an Iranian everywoman, boldly displaying her hair while most of her face is covered in masking tape. In "a Cut through," a nose-less Shahramipoor plays the role of Bibi Aisha, the Afghan woman whose nose was cut off by her brother-in-law when she attempted to leave her abusive husband.
With perhaps-intentional irony, such intimations of chaos are carefully controlled. The artist's visage appears unruffled and even serene in these pictures, and the sculptural elements are elegantly built. While Shahramipoor portrays both psychological and political turmoil, the forms and surfaces of her artworks are immaculately governed.