Samantha McCafferty: September 2010

I went on The Drawing Centers website and Ala Dehghan’s work caught my eye right away. I am often attracted to pieces that use a lot of color. The author Julia Horn mentions how Dehghans work draws from her “spontaneous experiences”. I find this very interesting. She tends to work in a smaller scale and uses the “centuries old tradtion of Persian miniature painting.” This form of painting is meant to draw the viewer in to the piece through an object that then forces the viewer to interact with “fantastical imagery.” Although her paintings refer to specific events in her life the author and I both feel that they are very relatable and that every one can interpret the piece in their own way. I really enjoy the artists that are able to represent their own life experiences while letting others re-experience moments in their own lives through their piece.

The author brings our attention to a particular piece in the artists collection. The piece is entitled the Never Touched flower. In the piece there are three women their heads are resting on a flowers. One of the women is bodiless. In the back of the piece there is this hypnotizing swirl pattern. There are many parts of this piece that grasped my attention. The first thing that I noticed was the blue swirl pattern. The pattern was oddly comforting while kind of eerie and the same time. The next thing I noticed was the women’s heads. The way their faces where kind of realistic but not in other ways really made me wonder is the faces were meant to be distorted why they each were distorted in a different way and why one mouth is covered and another’s mouth is is not covered. Were they meant to look like something other than a face? But at the same time you can clearly tell what the object is but the distortion really made you think. The last part of the piece that I thought really brought the piece together was the flowers. By themselves I felt that the flowers were quite beautiful but when you add them to this piece they become a beautiful understatement. I am rather intrigued by the positions of the flowers in relativity to the women’s faces. On the first woman on the right her head is almost sitting in the flower which I thought brought a lot of depth to that portion of the composition. The flower in the middle of the piece is covering the woman’s mouth I assume that to signify being silenced however the flower is not put their forcefully so I wonder about the meaning placed behind it. The last flower on the left has almost no contact with the woman. I really wonder what the artist was trying to portray with all of the women being portrayed differently. Also the last part of the piece that really intrigued me was the woman in the middle. I am still trying to figure out what the artist was trying to convey.In the end the piece really represented the oppression of women in different cultures.

This piece of Ala Dehghan’s work intrigued me so I decided to further research some of her artwork. I was not surprised to find that a lot of her work has something to due with women and often included the female form. I was however surprised to find that the Never touched flower was seemed to be the most representatively made. The rest of her work is very abstract and I wasn’t quite expecting that.

In the end I was really fascinated by Ala Dehghans and her ability to really give the viewer a chance to interpret her work without giving away an immediate meaning.