The Tell-Tale Tart: Sculptures By Shirin Fakhim

“Shirin’s sculptures are static forms with an ever-progressing story; a narrative of the women she sympathizes with.”

Shirin Fakhim. Untitled 5, 2010. Mixed media sculpture. Courtesy of the artist and LTMH Gallery.

The Tell-Tale Tart: Sculptures By Shirin Fakhim

Ali Bakhtiari

Shirin Fakhim takes us to the inner world of the artist; a world full of complexity, fear, wonder, and observation. Shirin’s sculptures begin with assemblages of readymade traditional terra cotta pots of various shapes and scales, which are used as the body. They are then decorated with fabrics, wigs, jazzy coloured high heel boots, and different accessories bought from public markets, second hand shops, and the bazaar. Sometimes she even dresses them up with her own clothes. In her work, we also find strong references to pop culture and language that are prevalent in Iran.

Many of Shirin’s characters lack hands, symbolizing social disability. The sculptures in the current series have also lost their lower limbs symbolizing social restrictions. Shirin’s women cannot stand on their own. She conveys the opinion that women in one way or another are kept as mistresses, dependent on men in a male-dominated society.

Shirin Fakhim’s body of work is an interpretation of her own personal life experience and observations. Divorced at a very young age, Shirin’s struggles with life and society came early. In therapy, Shirin was advised to join a theatrical troupe with whom she collaborated for two seasons. Her stint with theatre and later her introduction to independent film is embodied in her work in the form of narrative. Shirin’s sculptures are static forms with an ever-progressing story; a narrative of the women she sympathizes with. She speaks of the women she knows—of a drug dealer girl who epitomizes the femme-fatale look and has had a nose job; of a prostitute who becomes pregnant and falls in love; of a girl who runs away from her rural life to come to Tehran, save money, leave for Turkey, and from there go to America—all on a bicycle!

During Shirin’s interaction with the city’s socialites, she learned to use her sexuality to material ends. In one of her pieces, a ladder with a pair of high heels is placed on the lower rung, and a pair of breasts on the middle rung is symbolic of seduction and sexual desire. A smart looking toy car on the upper rung of the ladder represents material aspirations. In another sculpture, the pants are stitched in the front as a metaphorical reference to hymenplasty which has become a common solution for those who have lost their virginity before marriage.

Her characters are neither “tarts with heart,” like Fellini’s character in Nights of Cabiria, nor the “magnificent prostitutes” of Manet. The main issue of her work is sexuality. Susan Sontag has written that “androgyny is certainly one of the great images of camp sensibility”. So with Shirin’s hermaphrodites: “Camp is the triumph of the epicene style, the convertibility of ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ ‘person,’ and ‘thing.’”

She uses historic Islamic passion plays and paraphernalia like metal helmets as the heads of some of her characters to emphasize the concept of life as a fight for survival. By adding foul smelling pads and cockroaches on the sculptures’ underwear, Shirin reminds us that the sexual organs also double for less savoury bodily functions. One sculpture wears a flashy pink swimming dress and black pantyhose and is seated on a chair. This time even the existence of these women has been omitted by the artist, since that thing which is in the spotlight is not the presence of a person but the existence of a body. The body is the object. Shirin’s body of work is the working body.

She has made a series of stuffed women drooping out of big pots that are painted all black inside as if trying to pull themselves out of the depth of their misery. These figures live in a colorful world, with lipsticks and eye shadow, with fake or second -hand Gucci shoes. But all the same, we can see that they are stuck in their own made up world, a gloomy world from where there is no escape.