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Maybe these artists weren’t aware of their own values.
Now that we know their story, it amazes us to see the
hidden artistic values in many of them.
Their small and operational size is an obstacle that
impedes them from expressing their artistic
specifications in a stronger manner.
An idea crossed my mind and that was taking another look
at these pieces.
In fact, I tried to put my self in their shoes. It is a
pity that we have forgotten them and I find them quite
timid in this regard.
I decided to reconstruct their hand work, but this time
as sculpture, and nothing else. Sculptures made by
bronze, apart from their operational aspect, many times
bigger, placed on a pillar…
In a way it was a modern introduction of these objects
and I duplicated each of them to a limited extent.
I wanted people to see them, know they exist and hear
their story which like many other stories in our
history, are heartbreaking.
Our history has no sculptors. Only Farhad, and he is
just a myth…
Yet, in every era, some are born to be sculptors. Some
of those sculptors where born in Iran after Islam. An
era in which sculpture was forbidden and sculptors were
banned. So what were they supposed to do?
They could turn to architecture. Iranian architecture,
as it is known post-Islam.
Or they could make their sculptures in the framework of
operational objects.
In fact they turned into artists who made peoples daily
tools.
Part of these apparatuses included locks, kohl jars,
amulets, scale stones (rocks), salt shakers and etc…
which I learned about in Parviz Tanavoli’s books.
Tanavoli has compiled and embodied them into
collections; he has done his research on them and given
each collection its own specific book.
For instance, if we compare Iranian locks to other
similar objects from other places at the same period, we
realize that these objects weren’t much more than an
operational object in other places of the world. Whereas
in Iran, they moved much further. They are in fact
historical sculptures of the Iranians. Sculptures made
by the artistic view of their creators.
The name of the creators has faded away, for they were
never acknowledged as artists, and even though they
exist, our history is devoid of sculptors. While their
contemporaries made themselves grand names in Europe and
created the history of art.
