Ghazal Ghazi First Place Winner in the Ann Metzger Memorial National Biennial Exhibition
Migratory Bird, 2021, oil, canvas, thread, 84” x 84”
The Ann Metzger Memorial National Biennial Exhibition, November 19, 2021 – January 8, 2022, showcases national artists across and their diverse artwork and mediums. Ghazal Ghazi’s piece, “Migratory Bird,” stood out to juror Jade Powers and was awarded first place for several reasons. We spoke with Ghazal Ghazi about her prize-winning piece and her art practice.
- Does your work have a typical theme among all the pieces you create?
My most recent work intervenes in the tradition of Persian miniatures in an enlarged format. The paintings illuminate contemporary issues facing the Iranian-American and broader SWANA (Southwest Asian North African) and Muslim communities within the context of diaspora, migration, state violence, and the trans-generational transmission of culture.
Many Persian miniatures depicted the court life of royalty or visually narrated the mythological stories of heroes and heroines. They were also painted so finely that often the brushes used only had one or two hairs on them. My first entrance into painting was through murals and graffiti, so I was used to working big. I began playing with the idea of monumentalizing the miniature with 6-7 ft tall paintings to explore themes like transnational immigration, (un)belonging, and memory.
With the constraints of the pandemic, family archives have been the primary vehicle for exploring these themes, which then opened other ideas. The lives of everyday immigrants and refugees are worth honoring on a monumental scale, using the same lineage of an artistic discipline that has traditionally been reserved for royalty and heroes. I think with the progress and tireless work of so many social movements, there has been increasing consciousness about honoring those who live in liminal or marginal identities. Starting to explore these themes starting with the stories of my family and my personal life seemed like an intentional way to step into these explorations.
- What is the meaning behind your winning piece title, “Migratory Bird,”?
In the case of “Migratory Bird,” the portrait is based on a photograph of my uncle before he left Iran as an adolescent to come to the United States. This painting utilizes the visual vocabulary of Persian miniatures on a large scale in order to illuminate contemporary issues facing SWANA communities within the context of dual (un)belongings and the estrangement of exile. The text around the image is a poem I wrote inspired by the stories he’s told me about his childhood and his experience with immigration. My poem is written on the outer canvas frame that is sewn to the inner portrait. The interior portrait exists within a frame to which the boy is both attached to, but also separate. There is a sense of longing for the homeland, as well as a continuous act of (re)defining the self through vulnerability despite the estrangement of such a young migration. I came to America when I was young as well, and though our stories are different, I felt a sense of reflection in that pain of separation from loved ones, from family members who had always offered unconditional love and protection. In this way, I think intergenerational memories are often cyclical rather than linear, and the same can be said for trauma and healing.
- What inspired you to become an artist and could you explain a little about yourself and your background?
I immigrated to the U.S. when I was 6 years old and spent my life moving around – around the U.S., back to the Middle East, and then back again. I was a shy and introverted kid who knew she wanted to be a poet and a painter. I don’t have any formal training in art, I am largely a self-taught artist and in the last few years began taking some figure drawing classes at community art centers. My academic background is in sociology, and I am a librarian by profession. It has been a few years now of really focusing on my studio practice. In 2021, one of my paintings was chosen as a semifinalist in the National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2022 at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. This was such a blessing, and it has given me the confidence to continue pursuing my artistic vision.
Matriarch II, 2019, oil on linen, thread, 58” x 38”
- Your work also seems to be very symbolic to culture, language, and narrative could you elaborate on your work and these topics as well.
Finding my visual language took a long time. I knew what traditions I wanted to explore in my work – I have always been captivated by miniatures and kilim tapestries – but it took me a while to find and establish my story in relation to these traditions. I am not a calligrapher, and my portraits aren’t painted in the traditional miniature tradition either, they just reference aspects of it. I wanted to be honest as a child of the diaspora, but I didn’t want my works to be in conversation with a Eurocentric conception of art history and I didn’t want them made for the white gaze either.
I wanted to center Iranian and SWANA histories, to metaphorically go to these artistic lineages with these depictions of what our lives and struggles are like today, and say we are worthy of being honored like the courts of the old kings and the heroes of our fables, though we have been removed from ourselves and our pasts in every way imaginable. That doesn’t mean I am unaware of the white gaze or the fact that these works are being shown in America. This disjointed juxtaposition is part of the story as well. I recognize the significance of filling a space with Persian script, which is a non-Latin language that uses the Arabic script and to do so in the American Midwest and South, where I am based. The script has been vilified and demonized as a consequence of the War on Terror and other racist projects of the last several decades.
Violence against the SWANA community and Muslims has been so incredibly normalized and justified by official policies and rhetoric that there is a lot of fear to just be ourselves, to look or dress how we want or to speak our languages in public. There is an incredible amount of trauma in our communities, our sisters, mothers, and grandmothers have been attacked for wearing the hijab, we’ve been harassed because we were speaking, reading, or texting in our native language, we’ve been racially profiled at border crossings and airports, and harassed during interactions with law enforcement, not to mention the sanctions, wars, and violence directed back to our homelands where many of our families live.
There are also a lot of nuances to our stories. For example, the ways that domestic violence intersects with immigration and capitalism – where these forces and systems reinforce each other and deepen the marginalization. You can’t leave because you don’t speak English and your husband has all your paperwork – but you also can’t leave the abusive relationship because of the fear of deportation or the fear of facing poverty as a single mother. So, you stay and the violence towards you and your children continues. These struggles are doubly invisibilized – invisible to the white male power structures of your new country, and invisible to your motherland, where out of so much domestic strife there’s a romanticization that emerges of what life in America must be like. And in both of these imaginaries, there’s no room for stories about domestic & sexual violence, racism, or police abuse.
While some may make charged assumptions about the script in the paintings, assuming it is religious or of certain political affiliations, it often comes as a surprise that the script is poetry. Also, for some visitors, it may be the first time in their life that they inhabit a space where they are no longer part of the linguistic hegemony. It may be the first time they feel what it’s like to be the other. There may be some curiosity, confusion, or frustration. It is in effect a form of subverting the global hegemony of the English language and recreating what the majority of the world, especially the inhabitants of the Global South, experience with the constant barrage of English advertising, products, billboards, and movies, as a sort of byproduct of where (neo)imperialism and neoliberal capitalism meet.
So, this is a way to practice being unafraid, to challenge assumptions, to other whiteness, to depict and reflect our stories, and to catapult the linguistic intrusion of (neo)imperialism right back to its origins.