To Be Me: The contingency of the body
Abstract
Exploring my Iranian and immigrant identity, this dossier investigates factors that contribute to the formation of my identity through the experience of living in a complex and repressive society. This dossier is composed of an extended artist statement, a case study of UK-based, Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum’s art practices, documentation of a selection of my artworks, and a Curriculum Vitae. In my extended artist statement, I engage with feminist post-structuralist theories to explore my identity as multiple, performative, and contingent. I also discuss how I use these feminist post-structuralist theories in my art practice to question the phallocentric dominant ideology of spaces I have lived in and to construct new desiring subjects. To bring nuance to my artist statement, in the documentation of my art, I present my body art practices as a process involved in the construction of my identity. With my case study, I explore the way Hatoum’s body art practices represent a state of being in the geopolitics of exile.