FARHAD AHRARNIA

The exhibition title alludes to the legendary Scheherazade, the Iranian narrator of The Thousand and One Nights. A princess trapped in a fated marriage, Scheherazade used whatever tools were at her disposal, and so became immortalised in popular culture. Her husband King Shahryar had vowed that he will execute a new bride every morning. Therefore, over a course of 1,001 nights, Scheherazade told her husband a story, stopping at dawn with a cliffhanger, forcing him to keep her alive for another day.

Both huge celebrities of the time, Keith Haring and Princess Diana embodied and contained the aesthetics of the era. Throughout the later 1980s and 1990s, Diana used clothing and fashion to express her contemporaneity and promote certain values and aesthetics, which in turn connected her with the widest possible audience. Haring also used clothing as a means—dressing people such as Madonna and Grace Jones, celebrities in the New York scene of the time using textiles and the body to bring his iconic visual gestures to the masses, as anyone wearing a Keith Haring t-shirt or using a Keith Haring mug would know.

By deliberately limiting the visual information and by concentrating on certain aspects, Ahrarnia plays with the power of brand recognition and engages directly with themes of fashion and clothing, an undercurrent in his previous work which here comes to the fore. And God Saved the Queen are portraits of Diana, a modern-day legendary princess. Ahrarnia uses press images of Diana wearing her famous outfits, always cropping the image to hide her face, instead focussing on her bold choice of blazer or dress, which in turn are embroidered with designs drawn from artworks of Keith Haring. It is so obviously Diana, that one does not need to even see her face to know exactly who it is. Likewise, the designs are obviously Haring’s.

The flip side of the 80s glitz—the spectre of HIV and AIDS—haunted that decade and the early 1990s. Haring was himself a casualty, though not before using his fame and brand recognition to bring attention to the epidemic. Diana, meanwhile, was the first high profile individual to bridge and go beyond what was a taboo and to humanize the epidemic. By using her hands, providing a sense of touch, she normalized the process of how to handle a person suffering from HIV.

In Touch, Composition with Left Hand, hands in different shades of wood taken from different kinds of tree, are superimposed on each other. Smaller wood inlaid works focus on individual fingers and thumbs, which appear to be cut, alluding to the cropping we see on the And God Saved the Queen.

Like A Prayer uses traditional Iranian fabrics with Haring-inspired embroidered motifs—surreally deformed bodies and references to cutting, alludes to the 1989 track by Madonna, one of the singer’s most iconic, if controversial, singles.

FARHAD AHRARNIA

Farhad Ahrarnia (b. 1971, Shiraz, Iran) is an Iranian-British artist, based in Shiraz and Sheffield. He adopts and draws knowledge from an extensive variety of craft making techniques relevant to his localities. Through a rigorous methodology of citing art historical references, particularly those of Saqqakhana (a movement from the 1960’s where the then contemporary artists tapped into Iranian Popular Culture, traditional craft and Persian artefacts), Russian Constructivism and Surrealism, he continues to dissect and re-articulate the spirit and experience of modernity and modernism in contexts other than exclusively Western. Thus entangling, twisting, complicating and interrupting the established art historical categories, narratives and dichotomies.

Select solo shows include Twisting The Modern, Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai, 2019; Art in Another Language, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut, 2019; Something for the Touts, the Nuns, the Grocery Clerks and You, Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai, 2017; Manouchehri Merchant House, Kashan, 2016; A Dish Fit for the Gods, Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai, 2015; Stage on Fire, Rose Issa Projects, London, 2014; Canary in a Coal Mine, Rose Issa Projects, London, 2014 and Stitched, Leighton House Museum in collaboration with Rose Issa Projects, London, 2008.

Ahrarnia has participated in several group shows including: Seeing Is Believing: The Art and Influence of Gérôme, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar, 2024; Art Dubai with Lawrie Shabibi, 2022; The Human Image: Art, Identities and Symbolism, CaixaForum, Seville, Spain, 2022; Punk Orientalism, Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina, 2019; MATERIALIZE, Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai, 2019; Artissima, Dialogue sector, with Lawrie Shabibi, Torino, Italy, 2018; Each Day an Artist, Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai, 2018; Scripted Reality, Lawrie Shabibi, 10 Hanover, London, 2018; Works on Paper, Editions and Multiples Spring 2018, Aaran Gallery, Tehran, 2018; Shirin Gallery, Tehran, 2016; Abu Dhabi Art, with Lawrie Shabibi, 2016; Recentring Modernism, Insights Sector, Art Basel Hong Kong with Lawrie Shabibi, 2016; Serpentiform, Museo di Roma, 2016; Open Your Eyes, Rose Issa Projects, London, 2014; Embroideremania, Hinterland Kunzt Art for Vienna Art Week, 2013; Bringing the War Home, Winchester School of Art, 2013; The Beginning of Thinking is Geometric, Maraya Art Centre and the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, 2013; #COMETOGETHER, Edge of Arabia, London, 2012 and Migrasophia, Maraya Contemporary Art Centre, Sharjah, 2012.

He has previously participated in The Great Game, Iranian Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2015; the 6th Tashkent Biennale of Contemporary Art, 2011; the Sheffield Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale, 2007 and Documenta XII, Kassel, Germany, 2007.

His work is in several collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, (LACMA); Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; the British Museum, London; Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford; Harewood House, Leeds; The Mohammed Afkami Collection, Dubai and the Huma Kabakci Collection, Istanbul; The Farjam Foundation, Dubai, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Ahrarnia lives and works between Shiraz and Sheffield.