Stretch Manifesto: Bikini Installations

The installations with bikinis were the first iteration of the Stretch Manifesto series and were my earliest approach in uniting the aesthetics and repetition of working-class femme labor with sacred art.

The original Bikini series was inspired by the shimmering bikinis of “exotic” dancers under black light where the bodies of women disappeared in the darkness and the bikini shapes alone were made most prominent. These small geometric triangular forms only alluded to human presence, the femme figure without the femme body, a secularized transmogrification of the non-depictions of human form in Islamic art.

The soft and stretching sculptural geometric installations create shrine-like spaces that can be entered into that are aligned with the principles of Islamic art - geometry, recurrent motifs, and repetition- in a way that distances them from modern interpretations of the Quran. These transgress Islamic principles while identifying femmes as sources of strength, love, and as potent equal spiritual forces as a counter to restrictive political practices towards women that have been falsely attributed to the religion.

Biparva, 2018, Installation at Aaran Gallery, Tehran

Shabdolazim Bazar, 2010, Installation, Tehran

Compiled Archive of Bikini Manifesto Installations, 1999-2010

Roseh Flags (Textile Works): My Devotion

Hand-embroidered Roseh shrine flags with images generated from popular Western media covering war and revolt, grassroots texts, and historic Islamic iconography. Roseh flags are inspired by the Shia flags of Muharram (Ashura mourning), traditionally depicted with image and text from the Quran.

In My Devotion (2005), I embroidered new Roseh Flags on velvet, 36”x48”, with photojournalistic images derived from media war reporting, as well as fabricated images based on media reports, both accompanied by quotes from “The Wretched of the Earth” by Frantz Fanon.

My Devotion, Embroidery on Velvet, 36”x 48”

Roseh Flags: Here/There, Then/Now

2010

Created for a 2010 solo in Tehran on the one year anniversary of the disputed elections. Inspired by the Shia flags of Muharram or the evening rituals in a Roseh. These flags secularize the symbology which would otherwise have image or text from the Quran. The flags are 48” x 96” hand stitched on velvet. Images of state violence used against Black Americans who wanted to engage in their right to vote were used in place of the religious iconography depicting Imam Hussain and the Quranic quotes of justice. The images are specifically from Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s 1964 voter registration campaign to illuminate that struggle as one not less than the struggles written in Quran and as a metaphoric critique of Iran’s turbulent election process since discussion of the events on and after the 2009 elections were dangerous. Also, the images from SNCC, create a bit of a reflective mirror using the language of the state, which was to denounce oppression in the US, but cover up its own.

2010

Images from the opening of Here/There, Then/Now

2010

Created for a 2010 solo in Tehran, on the one year anniversary of the disputed elections. Inspired by the Shia flags of Muharram or the evening rituals in a Roseh. These flags secularize the symbology which would otherwise have image or text from the Quran. The flags are 48” x 96” hand stitched on velvet. Images of state violence used against Black Americans who wanted to engage in their right to vote, were used in place of the religious iconography depicting Imam Hussain and the Quranic quotes of justice. The images are specifically from Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s 1964 voter registration campaign to illuminate that struggle as one not less than the struggles written in Quran and as a metaphoric critique of Iran’s turbulent election process since discussion of the events on and after the 2009 elections were dangerous. Also, the images from SNCC, create a bit of a reflective mirror using the language of the state, which was to denounce oppression in the US, but cover up it’s own.

2010

Fannie Lou Hamer Speech

Handwriting on the windows of Aaran Gallery in Tehran for the Here/There, Then/Now exhibit, a translated text in Farsi of the speech which Fannie Lou Hamer delivered to the DNC in 1964. This was the first translation in Farsi. In this speech, Ms. Hamer speaks of the abuse she received when she attempted to vote. I wanted to make a reference to the prior year’s election while using the language of the Iranian government that accuses the US of civil rights abuse as a mirror.

2010

Everyday Imamzadeh: Fantastic Femmes / Tah(r)ir Social Club / Moozis

In 2012, I was an artist in the Gellerup Housing Project in Aarhus, Denmark as Danish Visiting Artist sponsored by the Danish Ministry of Culture. I worked with communities of disenfranchised and discriminated people from Iraq, Somalia, Palestine, Syria, Sudan and Turkey. Gellerup was considered a “ghetto” for immigrants after a 4 year refugee vetting required by Denmark Immigration but the setting was natural for my background as a fellow immigrant. Our group created a feminist art club at Gellerup called Fantastic Femmes, and we made art and had discussions about feminisms, discrimination and justice while creating public art to give Muslim women visibility in public spaces in Denmark. The Fantastic Femmes still meet and is facilitated by one of the original “femmes”. Based on this work with Muslim women and girls, I was also in 2012 invited to do a residency in Hamtramck, Michigan - the only Muslim-majority city in the United States - in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and the Arab American Museum. The group of young women worked with me to organize a feminist art club called “Tah(r)ir Social Club” to create public art projects around the city, culminating with an exhibition at MOCAD.

In 2017, with two fellow artists and cultural producers Sasha Ali and Arshia Haq, I co-founded Moozis, an ongoing fun-seeking art club inspired in part by my projects with other women. Moozis was initially hosted and seed funded by the Women’s Center for Creative Work, Los Angeles, and is a non-traditional, non-gender binary, multi-abled cross generational group that brings together kindred people of feminist, sex-positive, gender and non-gender inclusive, progressive, creative and multiplicitous, as well as all cultural and spiritual Muslims.

Selection from Moozis Auto Orientalist Photo Shoot, photos by Labbie Olfatmanesh, at Pasadena Rug Mart, April 2017.

AK-Ami

AK-Ami 2005 - 2013

AK-Ami is one of two characters (the other being The Sand Ninja) created that portrayed the exaggerations of identity many young women in diaspora from central/west/south Asia and North Africa took on post 9-11. AK is the militant alter ego who started wearing hijab as an identity marker to respond to wars, detentions, discrimination, but also as a response or even pander to exotification.

AK - Manifesto

Insurgency in a simple definition is the struggle of a people to defend themselves from dominant oppressors.

Was this picture taken in Baghdad or East LA? In the rubble of

Fallujah or Oakland? In the rubbish and destruction of Kabul or New

Orleans? Asmara or South Central LA? Port Au Prince or South Side of Chicago? Oaxaca or the Bronx? Housing Projects in France? US?

This is indeed photography of globalized destruction, land being stolen, it's people looted and raped. The food, soil and water, toxic and unhealthy. There is a full attempt to erase the cultures that are thriving. This is a neo-colonial urban setting that happens to be El Sereno, California in the US. But here a common struggle is shared with other parts of the earth termed as the "third world". Here in El Sereno, there is familiar pattern; a plot by capitalists and government officials for an invasion and land heist. The rate of living is high and if work is found it is hard and underpai

d. The pressures of living in poverty and injustice are creating a bloody internal feud. Street soldiers are forced into an underground economy and termed "urban terrorists". Laws are created to criminalize the community and termed by the dominant media and government as "for the good of the people". Police and government carry weapons but if residents do they are locked up, but more likely shot and killed on the street.

As we know, dominant media villainizes us. We must as a people's struggle to create our own forms of media with what is accessible.

May peace and justice be with you – Malika Kubra & AK-Ami

Malika Kubra & AK-Ami 2005 - 2013

AK-Ami & Malika Kubra skillshare 2008

AK-Ami Support Insurgency Stencil 2006

AK-Ami Silkscreen 2006

Commissioned by Self Help Graphics

Haram eh Massomeen va Shohadha – Threshold of the Innocents and Martyred (2008)

Hand carved wooden shrine sculpture and installation, physically inspired by my family’s shrine in Sari, Iran. For this piece I did research on all of the people who were killed by police in Los Angeles in 2008. Of the 41 people documented, I was able to find 14 photographs to make the carved portraits on the panels.

Based on this research, which I distributed, police were also forced to reexamine the case of Marco Gomez another young man killed by LAPD. The wall text is from an Iranian Shia prayer for those who died as victims of violence.

Inside of the shrine, I created a second rectangular layer nearly equal the height and width of the outside structure made of plexi-glass. For a total of 5 Saturdays, I went inside of the shrine and wrote other all of the incidents I could find internationally of civilian deaths by police or military. I wrote each story backward so it could be legible from the outside. Sometimes family members of the victims would come to see and make tell me to make corrections or additions, which I obliged.

2008

6’ x 9’ in a 21’ x 32’ room installation

Hand carved wooden shrine sculpture and installation, physically inspired by my family’s shrine in Sari, Iran. For this piece I did research on all of the people who were killed by police in Los Angeles in 2008. Of the 41 people documented, I was able to find 14 photographs to make the carved portraits on the panels. One of the portraits is of my friend Christian Portillo, who was 34 when he was killed.

Based on this research which I distributed, police were also forced to reexamine the case of Marco Gomez another young man killed by LAPD. The wall text is from an Iranian Shia prayer for those who died as victims of violence.

2008

Performance 2008

Inside of the shrine, I created a second rectangular layer nearly equal the height and width of the outside structure made of plexi-glass. For a total of 5 Saturdays, I went inside of the shrine and wrote other all of the incidents I could find internationally of civilian deaths by police or military. I wrote each story backward so it could be legible from the outside. Sometimes family members of the victims would come to see and make tell me to make corrections or additions, which I obliged.

Portable shrine 2009 - present

Collapsible installation made with stencils spray painted onto paper, to tour Chicago, Oakland, New York, Detroit, Atlanta, Toronto, Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas with faces of people killed in the above cities by law enforcement or paramilitary

Luck Running Out

Cheshm Geer, Luck Running Out Series, 2013

"Cheshm Geer" means eye catcher or in the case of the popular lucky charms, evil eye catcher. Part of the Luck Running Out series of photographs before and after my right breast mastectomy.

Jokes on Me / Stupid Muslim Joke (2009-2012)

Performed in multiple countries, Jokes on Me/Stupid Muslim Joke, is an interactive public performance, to confront the personal and collective perception of Muslims, as a cultural group and as individuals. I researched jokes spread on the web about “Stupid Muslims”, mostly written in the UK, US and Denmark. The jokes are on stickers all over my body and I ask people to read the jokes and write a response directly onto my body as the site of the contested intelligence and the target of aggression.

2010 - 2012

Reaiming the Canon (2005)

In this series of eight 52” x 52” watercolor on paper paintings, I focus on reversing dominant powers that document a version of history. The images are taken from photojournalism, largely omitted from headlines to maintain a political climate, to create a fantasy scenario of militant resistance. The locations are unknown, the specific struggle unclear. There is a feeling of creating an amorphous people’s resistance somewhere in a “third world nation” or third world people in a first-world nation, without a definitive location. The mystified become de-mystified through subtle changes or changing context, I attempt to recreate my own sort of revolution. These images are presented as a form of counter-propaganda. Paintings of guns and explosives within the hands of feminized black and brown hands and veiled and masked faces become an insurgency to erase to shift the notions of who creates change.

Shaheed, Shahead, Shayad 2005

Zayneb's Militia 2005

Drop'em to Block the Pigs

Looking for the Birds 2005

Burning the Masters Tools 2005

Blow Up Their Means of Production 2005

Victory 2005

Poppies without Opiates 2005

Goooooooal! 2013

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Rebel (2005)

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Rebel is a reflection on the coming of consciousness of the artist. The absurd images of myself as a baby with weapons and guerrilla masks, becomes almost a real documentation of my childhood. These images blend in with photographs and films often seen in various media of people in political/national/ cultural struggles. With current technology, there is always a questioning of the levels of reality but even of the absurdity of the reality itself.

Digital C-prints 2005

Through Me The Prophet Speaks (2001)

Set of 100 acrylic paintings on 4”x5” postcards of Iconic celebrities in the “West”

#1 2001

#2 2001

#3 2001

#7 2001

#17 2001

#28 2001

#48 2001

#49 2001

Performative

Rite; Right; Write Piece 2005

Rite; Right; Write Piece was an interpretation of Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece”. I worked with four collaborators who were education and language rights advocates. They handed out articles on Hollywood Boulevard, just outside of LACE and asked passers by to engage in the performance. The articles were on language supremacy and struggles with learning and expression through written word. Audience members were also given Sharpie pens to write messages on me while I wrote on a long scroll, telling my story of learning English. I wrote a stream of consciousness narrative on how I learned to speak English.

Esm 2007

Performance on a Tour Bus curated Ming Yuen S. Ma. I hijacked the bus, renamed the audience with name tags that had Farsi names on them. I then went into a monolgue of names that I have had throughout my life, either given or taken.

Houri 2009

Houri is a window installation, with 72 repetitions of my self portrait from age 12.

Based on a myth that began and was spread through western propaganda after several suicide bombings took place in the late 1970's, stating the people who killed themselves were doing this because they were told in “terrorist cells”, if they became martyrs, they would die and go to heaven and would be met with 72 virgins. This myth and propaganda has spread to Europe and the United States where it is quoted in jokes and has become a common belief that this is why suicide bombers take their lives. What is more interesting is that although this myth was used to debase Muslims, it has been re-appropriated by many Muslims or Islamic groups.

Twitter Theatre 2012

Projected Twitter feed intervention that took place and was shown live during a public address at the ONE WORLD festival, Denmark. International collaborators live-tweeted about issues of migration and xenophobia.