[Editor Note: This interview was originally translated from French]
A relative unknown in the United States, 27 year old Iranian native painter Nazanin Pouyandeh is taking the traditional nude in different directions with her charged dreamscapes, filled with symbolism and personal imagery.
When The Great Nude.TV came across her work at the 2008 Asian Contemporary Art Fair we were immediately drawn to the expressive qualities of her recent paintings, and the powerful use of the human form in her symbolism and personal narrative. Represented by LTMH Gallery domestically, we are fortunate to be able to interview Nazanin about her work.
Pardiss, 2008
The Great Nude: Thank you for taking time with us at The Great Nude to talk about your work. We were immediately interested in how gender politics affects your work. What does the use of the female form mean to you as a woman and as an Iranian Artist?
Nazanin Pouyandeh:
The use of the female figure as one of the main topics of my work is a fairly recent phenomenon (since the end of 2007). Instinctively, since the beginning of this series of paintings, I felt the need to have around me, female masks and to cover part of their bodies with made-up tattoos, inspired by the Persian and Indian miniature. The characters that I chose to paint, were exclusively women that were part of my entourage. I realized some time after this series started that this was an indirect way of my introducing me in my paintings as a woman and as an Iranian artist. I have always refused to work (on a piece) having to do with my origins, on the position of women. I do not appreciate stereotypes in art. For awhile, I even intentionally refused to paint Iranian faces to avoid all cliches. After painting for several years, spaces and characters from the Western world, I think today I’ve arrived to having some distance to my home country and am able to address it subtly in my paintings. Painting naked women is not a provocation but a way to make me naked through the images of my friends.
TGN: Many of our viewers are artists themselves, and we’d all be interested in hearing about the process from a technical perspective. Can you tell us about the process of creating your paintings?
NP: I paint my characters from photographs. For my recent paintings, I organize staged scenes with the necessary accessories, my friends arrive, and then I ask them to pose in ways that I have already imagined. The areas in which the scenes of my paintings are held are often imaginary, influenced by different sources. I paint my characters with light strokes. I like transforming reality by painting. The photo remains the source of an image, but I do not try to reproduce it. I’m inspired by it. The collage is the basic construction of my paintings. The various characters and objects come from multiple sources. What is important for me is to imagine and not to just reproduce it.
Setareh, 2008
TGN: We saw your painting “Setareh” at the Asian Art Fair last week, can you tell us about the meaning of and inspiration behind this painting?
NP: Despite the very strong figurative meaning in my painting, it is not illustrative. We would not find a distinct meaning or a unique story. In the painting entitled Setareh, as in most of my recent portraits of women I’ve painted, there is a confrontation between popular Iranian mythology with a contemporary character. I think we are more or less haunted by the myths and the fiction which has become legends in human civilization. Setareh is a character in a relationship of pleasure and pain as opposed to the small male counterparts, soldiers inspired by popular Iranian painting. And, at the same time, despite the air of melancholy on the woman’s face, there is humor in this painting, a disparity.
Leila, 2008
TGN: What was your artistic training, and how has living in the West affected the way you see your career as a figurative artist?
NP: I arrived in France at age 18. The following year, I had the wonderful opportunity to enter to L’Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts de Paris. At that time I was doing collages with images from magazines. Arriving in France, the world of invasive pictures fascinated me. The choice of images in Western newspapers and magazines, ripping them and diverting their meaning in my first creative works, was an unconscious way of belonging to this new culture. Gradually, I transformed these collages without this notion disappearing from my work. My first paintings were executed quickly. The subject and treatment would make one think of movie posters painted by hand in the Eastern countries. After returning from my first trip to Iran, I realized that my painting was heavily influenced by film posters and portraits of monumental propaganda on the facades of buildings in Tehran. This was obviously difficult for me to accept, the images I despised the most in the world were a source of influence for me. Gradually this influence has disappeared in my painting. What is interesting in the artistic process is the whole part which completely escapes artist. The faces that I paint, whatever their origins have large eyes and well marked traits, such as those of my country. But this transformation comes despite me. I’m thirsting for the image, it fascinates me. Living in Paris has allowed me to feed my thirst – feeding it with a whole new visual universe. This has completely influenced my work. The unlimited access to the image (cinema, photography, advertising, painting, etc.) opens more possibilities for creativity in this area. I use this opening while coming from a country where the visual world is totally different. My visual memory is itself a collage.
More Info:
Official Nazanin Pouyandeh Website
LTMH Gallery
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