[spectre] Visual Foreign Correspondents presents Sharam Entekhabi from Iran

[Marieke Istha]

Visual Foreign Correspondents presents
Issue 2
18 December 2007- 14 January 2008
Sharam Entekhabi, Iran
Title: Haji Firouz

In collaboration with The Globalised Crystal Ball we are proud to 
announce the second issue of Visual Foreign Correspondents. VFC is an 
independent platform in which 11 distinguished artists from around the 
world are invited each month to give their personal visual commentary on 
events and situations from their locally situated perspective. Their 
works especially created for urban screens and online platforms. This 
project will give people in the streets of Amsterdam a brief window into 
other regions, peoples and other kinds of imagination.

In Iran Haji Firouzis a clownesque character in blackface, traditionally 
heralding the Persian New Year: Nowruz. With song and dance he spreads 
good cheer and inaugurates the festive season. Set within a busy 
shopping street in West-Berlin, Entekhabi enacts his own version of Haji 
Fairuz. However, his continuous efforts and increasingly exaggerated 
gestures to attract attention and become included within a commodified 
urban setting, are widely ignored by the busy Christmas shoppers. Their 
own preoccupation with performing the festive season themselves, by 
means of consumption, disallows them to see, let alone consume, an 
element which seems out-of-place and disrupts the regular flow of goods 
and people. Entekhabi’s Haji Firouz challenges normative behavioural 
patterns by pushing social and racial boundaries; it becomes clear 
within these parameters, that participation in a particular system, is 
based on exclusivity and conformity.

Shahram Entekhabi was born in Boroujerd, Iran and studied graphic design 
at the University of Tehran and architecture and urbanism in Italy. He 
has exhibited internationally, and lives and works in-between London, 
Berlin and Tehran. His practice is framed within an urban setting and 
questions the idea that West-European urban space is primarily reserved 
for the white, middle class, heterosexual male. He explores these ideas 
via a variety of performative actions, using architecture, installation 
and digital media. In his work he chooses to highlight individuals who 
are ordinarily perceived as marginalized, and hence rendered invisible 
or forced into a condition of self-ghettoisation from within the urban 
domain, such as migrant communities (in particular from the Middle 
East). The question of visibility and invisibility, is a prominent theme 
Entekhabi keeps revisiting and exploring in his practice.

The work will be launched during the seminar event of the Globalised 
Crystal Ball in the conference space. An introduction to the work will 
be given, making a connection to the seminar and the ideas of the artist.

Independent from the seminar the work will then feature on the urban 
screen outside the ‘Balie’ every night for a month, on the The 
Contemporary Art Screen, at the Zuidas and in 11-Reatuarant Bar Club, 
part of Post-CS, museum of modern art, Amsterdam.
These screens will be in relationship to a specially designed website 
and ‘Oog’. The VFC website will show the work and contextualize it with 
political, social and cultural background information. Furthermore it 
will give information about the project and a possibility for the 
audience to interact.

The work will also feature in ‘OOG’, a commentary and opinion platform 
that is part the online edition of De Volkskrant, a major Dutch daily 
national newspaper. Here the work will feature for a week as part of the 
continuing series of artist commentaries.

http://www.visualcorrespondents.com

Screen locations
De Balie: Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10, Amsterdam
http://www.debalie.nl
CASZ: Zuidplein, Amsterdam
http://www.caszuidas.nl
11/Restaurant bar club: Oosterdokskade 3-5, Amsterdam
http://www.ilove11.nl

http://www.volkskrant.nl/oog

Visual Foreign Correspondents
Artistic director: Nanette Hoogslag
Editors: David Garcia, Nat Muller, Petra Heck and Eric Kluitenberg

For more information please contact Nanette Hoogslag at 
info at visualcorrespondents.com

Visual Foreign Correspondents is made possible by Amsterdamse Fonds voor 
de Kunsten, VSB, De Balie and the Netherlands Media Art Institute