My Worst Case Scenario
• 2010-11
• Charcoal pencil
• 3′ x 4′
•“My worst case scenario” is based on the diagram of Female Genital Mutilation operation*. Due to my upbringing in a religious country I was familiar with the notion of pleasure being cut off from life, feeling guilt from sexual enjoyment, and accepting traditional values of the society as indisputable rules of life. In countries which common ethical beliefs fundamentally affected every aspect of one’s personal life, even if one did not believe in these rules, treating them as “normal” becomes a way to feel accepted and welcomed as a member of a community. That is what frightens me the most, that people can accept these mores, take them for granted, and learn to live with them. My approach in these drawings is disturbing, yet aesthetically pleasurable. This is what happens when someone tries to make peace with something brutal, numbing themselves to reality in order to continue living. I place myself in the position of the person doing the practice and by extension situate the viewer in that place as well. I want to confront the spectator with a feeling of complicity in the act, and the reality of what is happening. Avoiding the truth is a form of acceptance. I aim to accuse my viewer. I am not after creating an agonizing documentary. I take my role as an artist and experience drawing a painful subject matter in a larger than life scale with a labour intensive material.
*Female genital mutilation (FGM) comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. Procedures are mostly carried out on young girls sometime between infancy and age 15, and occasionally on adult women. The practice is most common in the western, eastern, and north-eastern regions of Africa, in some countries in Asia and the Middle East, and among certain immigrant communities in North America and Europe ( WHO ). Iran is among one of the scarce muslim countries that this practice is NOT popular.
Related Publication:
* 2013 The Vagina Project : a gallery of original artwork from around the world made in reverie of the vagina created by JRow