Women living "life without a life"

In 2016, acclaimed Iranian photojournalist and painter Farzaneh Khademian emigrated to Japan and entered a world fundamentally different from her home country, Iran. Khademian was born and raised in the capital Tehran; she was seven years old when the Islamic Revolution changed all aspects of life in Iran. She belongs to a generation of photographers who graduated from art universities, but decided to use their cameras to document social and political themes.

In 1995, she entered Azad University Art School, where she studied photography. Immediately after her graduation, at the height of the late 1990s reform movement in Iran, she was one of the pioneering photographers who covered the 1999 students uprising, the assassination of senior reformist theorist Saeed Hajjarin, and many protests in support of the then-president Mohammad Khatami.

At the same time, she focused on documenting women’s life in Iran. One widely acclaimed project was about female passengers on the women-only section of public city buses in Tehran. In another, she took photos of women athletes when covering women sportspersons was still a taboo in Iran. She also covered various topics in Lebanon, Afghanistan and Pakistan for international outlets.

New aspects of gender inequality

When Khademian moved to Japan, she discovered new aspects of gender inequality and sexism in a modern country. Among the developed countries, Japan has one of the worst records of discrimination against women. It was a prime topic for Khademian to get her teeth into. This time, however, the Iranian artist used brush and canvas, rather than a camera to depict what she saw.

On 20 November 2021, her second exhibition in Japan, called "Peephole", opened in Tokyo, displaying naked, faceless figures. In the introduction to her exhibition, she wrote: "Peephole is a small opening through a door allowing the viewer to look from the inside to the outside in the same way that a camera lens does. In this series, I tried to look at my surroundings through this lens."

The first thing that is striking about your latest works is a vigorous exposition of nakedness. What inspired this bold presence of sexuality and nude figures in your latest works?

Farzaneh Khademian: I created all the works displayed in this exhibition under the influence of Japanese culture. In this series, I don’t see any impact from Iran or my experience of living there. If you look at the figures in this collection, you see that no life exists in these characters, and this is how I feel about many people’s lives in Japan: a life without life.

For example, the figures have no face because, because here in real life, I can’t see people’s true faces; I can’t see their feelings or emotions. I can’t get close to people more than on a certain level. It is difficult to understand if people are really happy or sad in this society. People cover their feelings behind a mask. A human being is sometimes happy, sometimes sad, tired, or full of energy, but here you can’t see these feelings being shown to others.

Moreover, how women are treated in society shaped my ideas about the figures I painted. Full-size rubber sex dolls are common in Japan, and some people even live with those dolls as if they lived with a real partner. Sometimes in Japan, I feel that women are treated as dolls and not as human beings with a soul. I got to know many women who economically have good lives, but are empty of vivacity. That is because, in this mechanical lifestyle, you become invisible: no one sees you. This also happens to men, but as a woman, I realised that through losing my identity as a woman in this system, I would forget my femininity.

Are you saying that in Iran, with all the restrictions imposed on women, you did not have this feeling?

Khademian: No, I didn’t have the same feelings in Iran. Those restrictions are different from being emptied of your personality. Here in Japan, despite social and political freedoms, people cannot easily express their viewpoints. Social and cultural traditions do not even let women laugh openly. People avoid talking about serious topics, which I think is very dangerous. When you live for an extended period in this atmosphere, you forget how life is outside this bubble; you fail to talk about important social and political matters.

I am not saying that I face more limits in Japan than in Iran. In Japan, I have never encountered disrespect for being a woman. But I feel the respect I receive is more because I am a customer in a shop or a client in an office.

When did you decide to put these naked figures at the centre of your paintings?

Khademian: The collection came together over about two years. It was not a conscious move initially, but the idea formed little by little based on my experiences in Japan. For example, after participating in life drawing sessions in three different galleries, I realised the naked models were always women. I asked why they didn’t have any male models. They were surprised by the question.

It is not the first time I have painted faceless figures, however. You can also find figures without a face among the works I painted in Iran, but those were different. In Iran, my works were expressive. I chose a different technique in Japan, and the excitement and vivid colours disappeared from my paintings. This was directly influenced by the new environment I am now living in.

In contrast to your figures, the objects surrounding them are full of colour and life. Why have you underlined such a big difference?

Khademian: That's the impact of what I see here in my daily life: all those flowers on the streets, the walls covered with the plants and the colourful objects I see everywhere. I began by drawing the figures, then I thought of them as a more serious project and added the colours. Afterwards, I added the objects I see in daily life around me.

What impact has your background in photography had on your work as a painter?

Khademian: For me, these paintings are a continuation of my work as a photographer. With a camera, I capture the moments that I witness in society. In these pieces, I have chosen certain moments of people’s lives from the new culture I live in and have used painting as a medium to depict those moments.

When I take a photo, I rarely crop my frame because I consider all the details before pushing the shutter button and think of everything in my frame. When I paint, I go through the same process. First, I witness and see all the details before me, and then I choose what I want to paint.

The other similarity that I see between photography and painting is the presence of people. Social documentary photography and photojournalism are the fields I have worked in, and when I paint, I look for similar social issues that I highlight in photography. That is why people are always present in my paintings. 

Interview conducted by Changiz M. Varzi

© Qantara.de 2022