In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with Artist & Portand State University Professor Taravat Talepasand.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Today, Emily chats with Artist & Portand State University Professor Taravat Talepasand.
About Artist Taravat Talepasand:
Taravat Talepasand is an artist, activist, and educator whose labor-intensive interdisciplinary painting practice questions normative cultural behaviors within contemporary power imbalances. As an Iranian-American woman, Talepasand explores the cultural taboos that reflect on gender and political authority. Her approach to figuration reflects the cross-pollination, or lack thereof, in our Western Society.
Visit Taravat's Website: www.TaravatTalepasand.com
Follow Taravat on Instagram: @artistvat
You can find her Exibit at Yerba Buena Center For the Arts through July 23. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO.
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About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:
Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.
Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil
Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast
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CREDITS:
Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.
Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.
For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com
2023-07-04 - AIA - EP004 - Taravat Talepasand
[00:00:00] Artist Taravat Talepasand: It's not that I am this rebellious woman in America trying to make work that makes people angry or frustrated or appalled. I want people to feel something. And if you feel something, I feel like that's a win.
[00:00:21] Host Emily Wilson: That was artist Taraavat Talepasand talking about what she hopes her art will do.
Welcome to Art is Awesome. The show where we talk with an artist or artworker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm your host, Emily Wilson. As a writer in San Francisco covering the arts, I see so many hardworking artists doing interesting work here in the Bay Area. And I wanted people to know about them.
So I came up with Art is Awesome. Today, we'll be talking with Taravat Talepasand. [00:01:00] Taravat grew up in Portland, Oregon. She loved to draw and paint, and she went to the Rhode Island School of Design and then to the San Francisco Art Institute. Now she teaches art at Portland State University. In a show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on view through July 23rd, her drawings, paintings, and sculpture from the last 15 years explore identity and cultural taboos.
They include a painting of a teddy bear named Muhammad, drawings of women wearing burkas and lingerie, and Iranian money dosed with LSD. At the opening of the exhibition, Taravat (her poetic name means the smell when the first spring rain lands on flowers), explained how the show was arranged. The outer areas of the gallery have works about her childhood and being Iranian.
Such as several videos from Public Access Television [00:02:00] of her doing Persian dances when she was 10.
[00:02:08] Bed Music: [00:02:09] Artist Taravat Talepasand: It really shows, like, how I was engaged with Iranian culture, even though I was born in America. It was such an important part of my identity, even though I didn't quite know what it really means. Like, can I be Iranian and not Muslim? Right? Can I be Iranian and speak the language and not necessarily be able to write it or read it?
Things like that, that I feel really connects with so many other Iranians that are part of the diaspora.
[00:02:38] Host Emily Wilson: There's also a neon sign reading women, life, freedom in Farsi and English.
[00:02:44] Artist Taravat Talepasand:This is a very important protest slogan that had started late in 20, 2022 and is continuing today. And it's not just a freedom and fight for women, but it's also for LGBTQ plus [00:03:00] communities in Iran. It's just a really a fight against the regime.
[00:03:04] Host Emily Wilson: Inside the gallery, she says, we are walking into what's inside her head and how she processes being Iranian and American. She says many of these works have been censored, temporarily covered with a black curtain at a recent show at Macalester College in Minneapolis.
She stands in front of a controversial drawing. Some students signed a petition to have the work removed.
[00:03:27] Artist Taravat Talepasand: So these drawings here that were censored at Macalester College of a woman in Burka, showing her lingerie underneath, this is actually based on an Iranian writer, Roxana Shirazi, who wrote the book, her memoir, The Last Living Iranian Slut, which is basically her exposing her journey and her trauma of sexual assault in Iran, in a Muslim household, and then how she travels and gets out in [00:04:00] London and does become quite a rebellion in herself. I really enjoyed the book and was really amazed that she was so open and honest about her own life and exposing those truths. And I feel like that's a very vulnerable place to be. And I really love and believe in being vulnerable as an artist.
[00:04:24] Host Emily Wilson: Taravat says she understands how some of the students in Minnesota got upset, but she's trying to connect not to shock.
[00:04:31] Artist Taravat Talepasand: Again, they have feelings and they have a right to feel those feelings, but I think that if you really dive into the many layers and the narratives, and further context about the work, you'll know that I'm not just making this willy nilly, right? This really is a deeper research in me connecting with other women and other stories and how I can really share that in my work.
[00:04:56] Host Emily Wilson: Taravat explained the context of a piece with a rug covered with [00:05:00] Trump's face, with a single tear, under a jean jacket, printed with Iran, Iran, Iran, on the back.
[00:05:08] Artist Taravat Talepasand: You can't really deny this Trump rug when you walk in here. This Cheeto faced orange. Man, human who is crying. So this lays at the bottom of the floor and on top of it, you see this denim jacket, this kind of armor, this, this way of kind of showing who you are as an Iranian, on this metal stand and this double ended noose. So it really is about the complexities of just the church and state, right? You know, um, and also this hyphenated life that one. Either it's first generation, second generation, whatever that may be, but when you, but you, when you know and you feel you have this generational connection to another part of the world, but you're living [00:06:00] in America.
[00:06:01] Host Emily Wilson: The images of Trump and the patches on the jacket come from a Kim Kardashian app, Komoji.
[00:06:08] Artist Taravat Talepasand: There was this crackdown during this time called Project Spider, where they were arresting women in Iran that they felt looked like Kim Kardashian. And they actually thought that Kim Kardashian. was creating some kind of coup to infiltrate women in Iran.And this was absolutely absurd. As absurd as these emojis.
[00:06:28] Host Emily Wilson: A painting of a teddy bear and a Ken doll is titled Muhammad and Jesus. Taravat painted the images from objects she's had since childhood. A 2007 incident in Sudan with a British teacher who gave a child in the hospital a teddy bear that the class named Mohammed inspired the painting.
[00:06:49] Artist Taravat Talepasand: But afterwards, the parents of the school were just livid. The fact that she had allowed the teddy bear to be named Mohammed. [00:07:00] She was arrested, she had lashings, and she was sent back to the UK. That story really stuck with me.
[00:07:07] Host Emily Wilson: Taravat says she wants to connect both Eastern and Western art, for example, by using egg tempura, used in both Persian miniatures and European painting.
With her work, she wants to create connections as well.
[00:07:20] Artist Taravat Talepasand: It's not that I am this rebellious woman in America trying to make work that makes people feel angry or frustrated or appalled. I want people to feel something. And if you feel something, I feel like that's a win.
[00:07:43] Host Emily Wilson: This is the part of the show, Three Questions, where I end every conversation with the same three questions to learn a little bit more about the artist. When did you know you were an artist? What was a work of art that made an impression on you? And what is the most creatively inspiring place [00:08:00] in the Bay Area?
In Taravat's answers, the influence her time at the San Francisco Art Institute, or SFAI, had on her is obvious.
[00:08:13] Artist Taravat Talepasand: I first knew I was an artist when I entered SFAI. That was the place where I started really developing my own narratives conceptually and really getting serious about how I wanted to execute and refine my works.
I think the time that I had really noticed a work that really impressed me and moved me was by Goya and it was the collection of prints that he had made and it was really not only just the work itself but it was a story behind it. The fact that he had to hide them underneath his bed, um, and to protect himself because it was so bold and so political and really went against [00:09:00] the Spanish Inquisition and it was the collection of his prints, Disaster of a War series.
The most creative and inspiring place in San Francisco for me. It's SFAI. I mean, that campus, the mural, the DeYoung mural, but also all the rest of the murals that they unearthed recently, too. And that library collection by Jeff Gunderson, that will forever, forever be a very big influence for me here in San Francisco.
[00:09:42] Host Emily Wilson: And that's it for this week's Theravath Talapasand.
You can get more information and link to our work in our show notes. Her show at San Francisco YBCA is up through July 23rd. Please [00:10:00] subscribe wherever you find your podcast media. In our next episode, we'll have a conversation with Heesoo Kwon. Heesoo grew up in Korea and studied business. But she decided her business plan just reproduced misogyny and patriarchy.
She started making art and went to the University of California, Berkeley to get an MFA. Hey, Sue will talk with us about the feminist religion she started based on freeing herself and her ancestors.
Art is Awesome is a bi weekly podcast dropping every other Tuesday. It was created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited by Charlene Goto of Goto Productions. Our theme music is provided by Kevin MacLeod with Incompetech Music. Be sure to follow us on social media or visit our website.
Till next time.[00:11:00]