Parvaneh Farid is launching an exhibition of mixed media art - Translating the Lines

Parvaneh Farid

PhD -PaR- candidate

The University of Winchester

T: 07850 160 661

www.latelierpapillon.co.uk

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Parvaneh Farid is an Iranian born “Mixed Media” artist who started her creativity in her childhood. She took interest in designing and making her own toys, dressing them up and making things out of garden mud and leftover plaster. From the age of eight she was admired for her outstanding ability in drawing, calligraphy and expressive writing; and as a teenager she taught herself to paint in oil.

Her student life in Iran was interrupted by the death of her parents. Her parental heritage was confiscated by the government and her right to higher education was denied due to her affiliation to the Baha’i faith. As a result, she left her homeland for the West and arrived in the UK where she naturalised and began to work as an au-pair before doing her nursing training. During this period, she returned to her art in her free time, taught herself clay modelling and took some singing lessons.

After she qualified as a nurse, she turned to academic art and attended Anglia Ruskin University, Winchester School of Art, the University of Winchester, Kent Institute of Art and Design and the University of Cambridge, achieving an undergraduate certificate in music, a BA in sculpture, an MA in graphic fine art and a PGCE in creative art.

Currently, Parvaneh is doing a “Practice as Research” PhD in art at the University of Winchester on the notion of the commonality of invisible and visible lines in various art formats. She believes: “Breaking through the fear of translating the lines of one art format into another provides the artist with an opportunity to find him or herself in a virgin world of possibilities. It allows the artist to feel free to see, to express him or herself, and to create work in an innovative manner, regardless of what is expected of him or her. That could be partially due to being a beginner in a new field which has not imprinted its norms on his or her mind.” 

Parvaneh also gained a postgraduate certificate in Women’s Studies and used the language of art in portraying the uprising of Iranian women and the role of the veil, or “hejab”. She is studying the life and work of notable Iranian women; Tahirih, Parvin Etesami and Forough Farrokhzad, whose poetry could be regarded as a chain of turning points in the emancipation of Iranian women.

Parvaneh’s previous exhibitions “Looking Like a God” and “A Silence to be Heard” won her the “Clyde Hopkins Award for Valorous Art”, the “Linda Granade Memorial Trust Prize” and the “CPL Sculptural Photography Prize”, and received some media coverage. She is now launching another exhibition of her mixed media art: “Translating the Lines”. This exhibition is open to the public, and onlookers are invited to step into her life as a British artist who began her academic career in exile from her native Iran.

Translating the Lines - Symposium Presentation Paper 26th April 2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA-mBKmayDc

Parvaneh Farid

A PhD candidate

The Department of Art

The University of Winchester

26^th April 2013

Supervisors: Prof. June Boyce-Tillman and Dr Olu Taiwo

Abstract: Breaking through the fear of translating the lines of one art format into another provides the artist with an opportunity to find him/her-self in a virgin world of possibilities. It allows the artist to feel free to see, free to be one-self, and to create in an innovative manner, regardless of what is expected of her/him. That is partially due to being a beginner in a new field which has not imprinted its norms on his/her mind. 

Let’s begin by defining the following terms; “the Invisible & Visible Lines”

·        Invisible Line: the invisible path of the movement of a phenomenon from one position to another which is documented on the canvas of our memory

·       Visible Line: the documentation of the path of an invisible line by means of technology; e.g. pen and paper

The human appears to have an innate urge to prove his/her unique sense of being to himself as well as to his environment –others-. Perhaps this is what Abraham Maslow refers to as “Self Actualisation” in his “Pyramid of Human Needs”. 

To respond to that urge/need, a human constantly communicates with himself as well as with others through translating his invisible lines of thoughts and feelings which emerge from his perception to a set of expressive lines of sound and movement.

The trace of these invisible lines of sound and movement, as they are performed, are documented on the “Canvas of our Memory” as “Invisible Lines of Memory”. The latter could then be translated to some “Visible Lines” by means of technology - in its simplest form; pen and paper.

The Language of the Art is born when these visible and invisible lines become stylised in their aesthetic form of both performance and technique of documentation by the use of metaphors, symbols and imagination. The manner of performance and the recording techniques then determine the category of the relevant art format they belong to.

If we agree that the platform of creation of all art formats is human perception, we can then argue that the invisible lines of expressing those perceptions and the visible lines of their documentation could be translated to one another, simply because they are from the same origin.

My hypothesis is whether or not translating the lines of one art format to another could provide the artist with a space for further innovation and more agile creativity. In other words a dialectic process may take place during the course of translation of one format/thesis to another/antithesis, which could give birth to a synthesis of an innovative style.

To study that, we may look at the visible and invisible lines of thought and figurative poetry of three Persian female poetesses of the mid 19^th to 20^th century.

1. Tahirih - Qurratu'l-`Ayn - Fátimih Baraghání (1814 or 1817 – 1852)

2. Parvin Etesami (1907 – 1941)

3. Forough Farrokhzad (1935 - 1967)

All three of them died in their thirties and each one of them is regarded as being a turning point in the history of the liberation of women in Iran for a particular reason.

Tahirih has put her stamp on history for being the first woman who publicly removed her veil, saying: "You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women". She was executed by the government for being an active member of an Iranian based religious movement; Babi, which progressed into today’s Baha’i Faith founded in 19^th century Iran.

It is notable that although Tahirih could be regarded as the pioneer for the work of the other two poetesses, it is not until Forough appears on the scene that a feminine language finds its way into Persian poetry. Up until then the Persian poetesses even like Tahirih wrote their words as a man would describe and praise his female lover. Parvin’s poetic language, however, was neither this nor that. The solution which Parvin found was to act as an asexual narrator who simply reports a dialogue between two persons who would represent some social characters; in this instance a nomad and a Sheriff.

During the course of this practice based research three poems have been chosen, one poem by each of these poetesses:

“The Bird of Heart” by Tahirieh, “A Nomad and the Sherif” by Parvin and “Another Birth” by Forough. An attempt has then been made to translate the invisible lines of their perceptions and the visible lines of their expressions to visible lines of “Designed Persian Calligraphy, Narrative Photomontage, and Freehand Drawing as well as Digital. 

The onlookers are asked to kindly express their opinion as to whether they agree with this hypothesis and why.  

Creation of New Dimenssions

Creation of New Dimenssions
Translating the Lines
Parvaneh Farid
University of Winchester
February 2013

The art allows the mind to travel where logic looses its right of entry.  Our civilisation is not built on the ideas of those who have conformed to what was possible, but on the courage of those who have let the bird of imaginations soar to unexplored and unsafe horizon of impossibilities.
 An artist takes risk to see what is forbidden to see, to imagine what is forbidden to imagine and to deliver what is not expected to be delivered.

In a world which is saturated with rules and regulation which guarantee our social popularity and comfort, we may rest back and relax confidently at price of loosing our authentic self. In such world the art and the artists are not of exception unless they consciously free themselves of those norms and regulations which are merely formed to allow some in and to keep others out.  For example, if you can keep up with rhymes, you are considered a poet and if you cannot, you are not a poet and therefore you are not allowed to express yourself in poetic forms. These forms of acceptance or rejection within an artistic group could become most destructive when believed by the expresser/artist her/him-self.

The fear of rejection and loosing identity can also become the main reason for the artists of different disciplines to avoid translating the lines of their usual art format into an unfamiliar one. This could happen due to both internal and external pressures. The internal pressures force the artist to stay with her/his usual media because s/he has more control and experience in expressing her/him-self with that. The external pressures; such as market and fan clubs, also pigeon-hole them within the popular artistic field for better earning and/or keeping an easier mental access.

Breaking through the fear of translating the lines of one art format into another provides the artist with an opportunity to find him/her-self in a virgin world of possibilities. It allows the artist to feel free to see, free to be one-self, and to create in an innovative manner, regardless of what is expected of her/him. That is partially due to being a beginner in a new field which has not imprinted its norms on his/her mind.
“Poet Robert Hayden was fond of saying that poetry is the art of saying the impossible, by which he meant, we may presume, that the poet attempt to discover methods by which ineffable realities (emotions, ideas, sensations, believes) could be translated into some sort of verbal formula by which they could be understood. Also implicit in this the statement is whether the same information might be conveyed in another, more direct method, or is there something valuable accomplished by the indirection with which poetry communicates to us the artist’s vision –the process of gaining access to meaning is integral to the meaning itself.

Another thing Hayden was found of noting is that so often the most popular – if poetry has any sort of popularity these days – is usually mediocre poetry because it can be easily understood.  For while poetry, like all language, is a form of communication, if it merely reminds us of what we already know, then it probably does not stretch us beyond that our present state of understanding, the very goal that worthwhile art demands of us.

Not that being reminded of what we know is unpleasant or without any value, but great poetry, poetry with lasting merit, takes us from our present state of awareness to some place else, some place we may not have ever been before, some level of understanding we did not formerly have.  But it is usually not any easy trip because the vehicle with which poetry transport us from here to there is figurative language – metaphors, symbols, allusions and other difficult rhetorical devices that forces us to meditate, to ponder, to use that part of our minds that is not often exercised.””  (Hatcher, John S. and Hemmat, Amrrollah (2002)The Poetry of Tahirih, Oxford, George Roland, P16)

Although I agree with Hatcher and Hemmat that interpretation when they say poetry,- I would say the art in general -  like all language, is a form of communication, but I do not agree with them saying the indirect method of communication which a poet - I would say an artist – employs is merely responsible to stretch the mind of the reader. Rather, I would expand that idea by claiming that escaping the rules of the reality true translating the lines of the thoughts into the lines of poetry cause not only the reader minds stretches, but the poet’s/artist’s creativity also develops new dimensions into its creativity.

They say that “because the vehicle with which poetry transport us from here to there is figurative language – metaphors, symbols, allusions and other difficult rhetorical devices that forces us to meditate, to ponder, to use that part of our minds that is not often exercised.” I would claim that it is not merely the fact that figurative language of poetry forces us to ponder and use the part of our mind that is not often exercised causes development, but the notion of one set of invisible line – thoughts- being translated to another.

In Tahirih’s poetry lines of Tahirih’s thoughts and feelings are translated into lines of invisible imaginary pictures, then they are translated into the lines of figurative language / poetry. In my work, I translate Tahirih’s figurative language back into invisible lines of imagery pictures in my mind, then I translate these figurative images from my mind into visual lines of figurative images and calligraphy design.
I agree with Hatcher and Hemmat’s that if the poetry- I would say the art in general – would only say what we already know what would be the use of it but the form of comfort.  The arts should provoke the mind for further understanding and I believe and try to show that this takes place much better through translating the lines of one art format into another.

Translating the lines of thoughts into art formats could challenge, the this gave norms, could be done for the sake of escaping persecution of the oddities, could be done by the artist in order to courting the communication for only a few to understand, hence can prolong the life of the message and overcoming dangers of this drawing the of.