March 31 to June 3, 2023
BAF Gallery, Vancouver, BC
By Kiran Dhaliwal
Aileen Bahmanipour’s uncanny installation and works with paper question the regulation of and access to information through its destruction. IT IS MEANT TO BE READ features revisited and new works by the Iranian-Canadian visual artist from her winter residency at the Burrard Arts Foundation. Bahmanipour’s practice is informed by her lived experience with censorship in Iran. Her work also centers the exploration of contemporary forms of Iconoclasm which she defines as “not to reject or negate the image but to redefine it.”
The gallery is transformed into a quasi-bureaucratic space with diagrammatic imagery, paper hanging on the walls, and a filing cabinet in the center. Instead of answers and information, Bahmanipour’s manipulation of each piece reveals tensions and misgivings in the supposed transparency of constitutional law and archival systems. In turn, this prompts viewers to remedy their curiosities beyond the gallery space and, like the title suggests, encourages active interpretation.
When clarity is lacking, this creates a level of opacity obfuscating the connection between a body and language.
When it comes to information meant to be accessible and understood by the public, things like government documents and constitutions often feel like they’re written in a different language. When clarity is lacking, this creates a level of opacity obfuscating the connection between a body and language. IT IS MEANT TO BE READ (2022) is a manifestation of this connection where Bahmanipour reimagines language through the exploration of her own body in the process of engaging with an English translation of The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This vaguely worded document contains articles regulating and restricting the circulation of information to the Iranian people. For those trying to navigate what’s legal or not (especially when the consequences are severe), the ambiguity plays in favour of the state as the public reaction to such dubiety can present itself as self-censorship. These conditions create cautious, fearful citizens who do not want to test the law, afraid that acting outside of the status quo may land them in prison or worse.
This series occupies three of the four walls and takes on two approaches. In the first approach, handmade letter-size sheets of paper are embedded on both sides with single lines cut from the document. The lights of the gallery glow through the sheets that extend outwards making both sides visible to the viewer. Bahmanipour’s deconstruction and reconstruction of the Iranian Constitution is her method of finding new ways to connect to the language and attempt to understand it. The single lines are folded into a knot and then arranged onto the paper like concrete poetry, creating a new method of connection and meaning to the language.
The other two walls are mounted with fifty-five pages of handmade paper that, while still wet, Bahmanipour placed over her keyboard as she typed the constitution. The organic, delicate quality of the paper creates a sense of softness, making the depressions and punctures left by her typing fingertips on the lower half of the sheet somewhat violent. The sheets are affixed side by side to the wall with a single nail against a painted strip of pale umber that runs along the two walls. Described as “cryptic” in the exhibition write-up, this series is arguably the clearest embodiment of Bahmanipour’s efforts to understand and reimagine the text and language. The perforations made in the paper can be seen as indices of her body as she converts dysfunctional language into material form.
Iconoclasm doesn’t just refer to the destruction of religious icons, images, and monuments, but symbols of a political or ideological cause as well. Bahmanipour’s interest and exploration of contemporary forms of Iconoclasm is displayed in this work. She also gives the ground of the image—which historically has been suppressed and regarded as merely a surface that holds the image—a new language, making it more visible and a part of the image. She uses the iconoclastic gesture of an image-breaker or, as she describes in her statement, “the person who doesn’t have a language of her own but by deconstructing the already established language tries to create new meanings to make sense of reality and create meaning from apparently disparate elements.”
The sculptural installation, Filing Cabinet (2017-2023) is a transparent, self-destructive archive system. Again, Bahmanipour interrogates the supposed transparency of archival systems by removing the sides of the filing cabinet to make the insides visible. Viewers are encouraged to open and look through the drawers. Three of which contain clear folders with printed and layered diagrammatic imagery. As if the cabinet was dreaming about the folders that sit inside of it, a dream bubble in the form of a large painted roll of acetate reaches up and wraps itself around the duct above.
On the floor between the two is plastic tubing that is connected to a dosing engine in the bottom cabinet drawer. The engine administers a permanent, acidic ink that travels through the tubes and pools onto the painted pile of acetate and given its nature, will ruin the intricate illustrations. When an archival system is meant to preserve and accumulate information, Bahmanipour gives us an anti-archival, self-destructive system that eats away at itself. No matter how clear the folders and acetate are or how many panels are taken off the filing cabinet, what stands between me and this installation is a curious space worth questioning.
At a time when we are constantly bombarded by information and falling into algorithmic feedback loops on social media, IT IS MEANT TO BE READ left me feeling slightly disoriented and walking away wanting to know more. Bahmanipour’s manipulation of the selected source materials raises questions about the systems and flow of information meant for the public. By deconstructing and reconstructing the image, her work interrogates archaic, systematic constructions of representation and presumed objectivity with an alternate visual form. Despite the opacity of their façade, viewers are invited to interact with the materials that promise transparency and are meant to explain how systems function. Instead of searching for answers in documents that falsely promise this transparency, the exhibition encourages using our confusion or restriction of information as a catalyst to create alternative methods of understanding.
This review is featured in our third print issue themed on Censorship found here.