This is the story of our past and present
Statement, 2006, 5:28 min

Afsarian, too, has often been confronted with curious curators from the West. And he has learned from that confrontation. "We know what we have to give them so that they can go home with the good feeling of having discovered something brand new – namely us," he says: a bit of politics in art, women’s rights, Islam, oppression, censorship. "And then they load up their ships with junk and kitsch, and after China was the hype of their market for a few years, now it is Iranian art – or what they take to be Iranian art." Afsarian calls this neocolonialism: an asymmetry of the gaze that massively hinders any independent development of contemporary positions in Iran and drives them out of the focus of attention. Between the international market and the official fostering of an art fettered by tradition or by misunderstood Modernism, little scope of action remains in Iran for self-confident contemporary artists.