Mitra Soltani explores female identity from within the context of hierarchical structures and patriarchal societies. Her work focuses on aspects of tribal culture and the interplay between power, archive, and memory. In one of her most recent projects, the artist works with the biographies of those she labels nameless. Nameless, in this context, refers to an outcome of forgetting that occurs when individuals are neglected by the structures controlling, shaping, and ultimately determining public memory, for instance, the media. The media, with its ever-increasing addiction to speed of coverage, provides fewer and fewer opportunities for either the life, or the death, of the nameless to be recognized. The nameless therefore have no existence in public memory. Soltani, however, having grown up in the city of Shahrekord – located to north of the Zagros Mountains – is acutely aware of how the erection of monuments and stones establishes public memory and resists oblivion. For instance, in a cultural tradition typical of the region, a gravestone in the form of a lion is erected to symbolize the qualities of bravery, courage, and other valuable skills such hunting and shooting, which characterized the life of the departed individual. For the nomadic people of this region, stones function to cement collective memory; however, this practice is reserved only for tribal men. READ MORE…
_ Baharak Omidfard
