Epic Iran is a bewildering rocket-ride through 5000 years of history

3/5
Little is allowed to breathe in this new exhibition, which forces artworks up against each other like commuters jostling on the Underground 
26 May 2021 • 12:16pm
Detail from Shirin Aliabadi's Miss Hybrid #3, 2008
Credit: © Estate of Shirin Aliabadi. Collection The Farjam Collection
A blue-eyed blonde is staring at you through the camera. Though she wears a headscarf, her attitude is feisty, defiant. A plaster across her nose indicates recent cosmetic surgery. An enormous bubble of lavender gum, obscuring her mouth, is about to burst – like her generation of Iranian women, perhaps. Pop! 
It’s a surprise, this photograph from 2008 by the artist Shirin Aliabadi – in the V&A’s new exhibition, Epic Iran. With more than 300 objects (none from Iranian institutions) spanning, as the subtitle puts it, “5000 years of culture”, it challenges Western stereotypes about a country infamously included in President Bush’s “axis of evil”. To those of us weaned on news footage of grim-faced mullahs, barbaric public executions, and crowds chanting “Death to America!”, the show is a revelation – especially its final section, which deals with Iranian art from the past turbulent century. 

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