Event detail
The Psychology of Fear by Maria Kheirkhah
12. Jun - 15. Aug 08 / ended 198 GalleryFree admission
from 11 - 5pm Monday to Friday
Maria Kheirkhah, The Psychology of Fear, 2008
Curated by Predrag Pajdic
PP Why The Psychology of Fear?
MK An intense climate of fear is all around us. We are constantly being told to be suspicious. We are afraid to go on trains and plains, because of daily news continuously reporting on terror. That word is embodied in our conscious as we hear it every single day in one way or another. So I guess for me the question is, why is there such a climate? Who are we supposed to be afraid of?
PP Do you know the answers?
MK I am not sure if I want to provide answers to these questions. Perhaps I don’t know the answers myself, so I question. I am embarking here on difficult issues in order to initiate a debate so that the beast in all its entirety and complexity is comprehended and put to rest. I want to dissect each part of it. I want to understand it. My ongoing project The Anatomy of Ignorance is all about that.
Through conceptually abstract work I often investigate intricate cultural and historical analogs, as well as realities in my contemporary social and political context. I question history. I inquire into historical particulars. What are the motivations here? I am seeking to understand the language, which is spoken to me. If one understands one does not fear.
PP In your new body of work you talk about the monster. Please explain.
MK I have decided to work with the idea of Frankenstein as the monster, drawing parallels with what is presently the subject and object of fear (the Islamic bodies and regions where they are located: the Middle East, Asia and parts of Africa), with the Middle East being the epicenter of it and the Muslim body being animated as the beast, primarily within a Western context. This object of fear I represent as the monster, the beast, constructed of different body parts, unpleasant and to be feared by the masses.
To me The Anatomy of Fear is about the apprehension of any other. In the past the others were the Jews, the blacks and now Muslims. Who will be next?
PP Where does Kheirkhah name come from? Do you consider yourself as the other?
MK I am Iranian. Kheirkhah is an Iranian name; you may also refer to it as a Muslim name. Do I consider myself as the other? I was born and brought up in Iran and then came to study in the UK in late 70’s. Since then I move back and forth between Iran and the UK. I am very familiar with my own complexities and myself as a being so I don't consider myself as the other. But then again it all depends on the company I am in. I could feel as the other at times.
(From a conversation between Maria Kheirkhah and Predrag Pajdic, May 2008)
http://www.myspace.com/198contemporaryarts
User opinions
7 Opinions where posted
2
Go and see it!!!
by Darius 12.06.08 15:36
Extraordinary work. Well done!!!
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His beard
by Aneczka 26.06.08 14:25
And why oh why does he look like Abraham Lincoln?
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Brain damage
by Derek Perry 18.07.08 13:08
The row of brains may tell you something about what this exhibition is about. But the black setting, neon lights, skeleton and mysterious jars, all overseen by a Frankenstein monster take you into darker places.
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More Than Meets the Eye
by Andrew 18.07.08 18:44
The Imagery is a means to tell a darker, more pressing and contemporary story.
Thoughtfully developed and technically adept, this exhibition of installation, video and sculpture punches above its weight.
Worth Seeing.
6
contemporary feelings
by paula roush 19.07.08 17:21
The scene, staged in two adjacent rooms, provide us with a hyperbole of contemporary feelings, one in which body prostheses and avatars of gothic-modernist cinema conflate what Maria Kheirkhah designates as Psychology of Fear.
We are un-welcomed into the first room by Frankenstein, the man/equin seating in a chair with his back turned on us, the gaze hidden away, sparing us from a confrontation that we will later encounter. That first moment can thus be invested in the long shelf of white ready-made brains, impeccably tucked away in jars of visceral amniotic liquid. Do these human operating systems stand in for reservoirs of cultural memory or for testimony to brutality and ignorance, a question that stays with us as we negotiate the passage into the second room.
There, the narrative deepens into more human remains, this time death itself, white bones and carcass wired into the neon light that spells out a Fantastic Notorious headline, buzzwords that bitterly echo current rhetoric of the new. Framing the scene, the video-body of the artist is projected onto the facing wall, the camera exploring it from skin deep- abstract microscopic surface of contact- into a frontal confrontation with the eye- the eye behind the primal scene, returning us the gaze within the visual field of our encounter with glamorised death.
Overseeing it all, a decorative glass vase replete with petrol, the genie in the bottle that drives forecasts of technological doom, a final decorative sign of redemption into consumption and capitalism.
It is in our exit from this space of death, that we encounter the monsterâs eye- Frankenstein the dead cyborg of literature and cinema- a womanâs creation and a misfit of intercultural fears.
paula roush
