Exhibition: Migration and dissent go on, with you
A double exhibition by an Iranian photographer offers portrait of immigration and resistance - and in a subtle way, makes you a participant in both.
There is a curious symmetry between the two series comprising the double exhibition by Iranian photographer Zohreh Mohammadhosseinpour. On the face of it, the topics and styles are as different as can be: one is about dissent in Iran, the other is about migration to England. One is made of triple exposure photographs so dense they become almost a collage, the other is straightforward portraiture. But as you stand between the two series that face each other off from the walls of Pulse & Pickle - a new and promising space in Walthamstow - you realise they’re not only chapters of the life of the same person. They are also stories that continue, each in their own right: neither feels complete, even if neither feels lacking. Both dissent and migration go on.
The exhibition took place over several days at Pulse & Pickle in Waltahmstow. Formerly a pizzeria and coffee bar beloved by the area’s Albanian community, it is now now reopening as a cultural centre and community hub that will feature live music events, art exhibitions, and educational workshops, as well as a vegan and gluten-free restaurant, with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and members of the Global Village. On the last evening of the exhibition, the place was packed with viewers of all ages. Kids ran about; two families played a card game on a little table. The collective circulated cups of delicious tea. The feeling was much more of a neighborhood community centre than an art venue in any pretentious or exclusive sense.
The first series - “A Title is the Hardest One for Me” - is a group of six triple-exposure self portraits, with each subject-photographer underlaid by photos of recent riots and repressions and, further below, archival footage of the 1979 revolution against the Shah. In one, a man’s silhouette is holding the camera at chest level. Behind him, the current regime’s crackdown on the Green Movement in 2009 merges seamlessly with the raised club of a Shah policeman battering revolutionary protesters in the late 1970’s. In another, an older woman is draped in something that at first glance looks like a shimmering copper-coloured shawl. Then it becomes apparent these are flames from burning tires in a recent protest. Mohammadhosseinpour herself is underlaid by pictures of men holding images of their sons disappeared by the Shah. There is a curious arch between those formal portraits within portraits - displayed in circumstances as opposite to consent as it can get - and the portraits in the series, taken freely by the subjects themselves, faces uncovered; an act of no small courage. And the darker palette of these glazed images means that simply by looking at them you, too, become a subject and participant; the central portrait in the triple-exposure becomes a backdrop for a fourth layer: your own reflection in the glass of the frame.
The second series - “People from Nowhere” - is displayed just opposite. It is based on Mohammadhosseinpour's experiences as a recent immigrant in London. After spending her first year on Couchsurfing, she began staging portraits of the people she met - some native-born Londoners, some recent immigrants like herself. The centrepiece of each portrait is a chubby couch - concrete-grey and massive, but, in fact, inflatable - set on the lawn of a small public park in south London. On or along the couch are the subjects. Some sit ramrod-straight, as if posing for an official portrait. Some lean slightly forward, as if they sat down for a minute and are eager to get up and continue to their next destination. Some are sat as if they have expended all of their powers and are not likely to ever get up again; this is the end of the line. A woman sits on the arm of the couch, as if making room for an as-yet unarrived companion or family. A man crouches next to the couch, as if proudly displaying a milestone purchase.
These could be portraits of Londoners, mostly first or second generation immigrants, on different journeys; or visualised landmarks in the journey that all migrants, international or internal, undertake. In some way, the series feels like a counterpoint to Siân Davey’s series “The Garden”, which still hangs on the external wall of the Photographer’s Gallery in Soho. Davey’s portraits are lush with almost confectionary colours, combining the crowded opulence of the garden with the guarded, sometimes almost sullen expressions of her subjects. Mohammadhosseinpour’s portraits are sparse; around her subjects is a vast empty space, and while the grass carpet is green, the sky is a milky grey. In the background, council estate towers loom; but the subjects, whether spry or exhausted, tentative or relaxed, are focused and present in the moment, and, for the most part, about to get up and move into the next. Occasionally, a construction crane edges into the frame, as if to underscore the couch as a cornerstone for a new home, whether temporary or permanent. It takes a few turns around the gallery to realise that the couch jammed into the corner below the photographs is in fact the-couch, now slightly deflated and battered. You could sit on it and have your portrait taken, whether by a friend or by your own inner eye, and invisibly join the protagonists. Or you could let it be, and give space for it to serve part of someone else’s story still: just then, a child is sprawled on the couch, sleeping.
Mohammadhosseinpour says she’s deliberating how to continue using the couch in future exhibitions of this series. Meanwhile, the triple exposure series is set to return at the Chester photo festival in May, and is soon to be turned into a book.
To see more of Mohammadhosseinpour’s work, visit her website. To keep up with events and activities at the Pulse & Pickle, visit theirs.