Shahram Entekhabi (b.1963, Iran, resident in Berlin)

Golden Edition
Acrylic and metal on photograph 2003 - 2010

Iranian-born Shahram Entekhabi is currently a Berlin-based architect and artist.

Both his video-performance works and 2D (photographic and multi-media) works are constructed imagery which have their source in the polemics of the Orient/Occident binary. Whether through the use of caution tape in a public Western space (Cathedrals , public walkways) or via the application of the tchador (traditional full-body scarf worn by Muslim women in Iran) to women in Western advertising and pornography, his visual tool-belt is equipped full of political weaponry to counter the constructs within which he operates.

Entekhabi  ‘Islamicized’ all the women in his works in order to cancel out the perceived compliance and danger that has been bestowed by the West on them without their own voice being taken into consideration. 
The muscular woman in this image, far from being a mere object and wimp, opens up ideas of the reading of gold and how it’s considered as a signifier of opulence in a worldly sense, something of value, worn by a woman to enhance her beauty. Instead, she wears it merely to cover herself, rendering it down to the mere covering of her body from the Western gaze. It is an Islamic woman’s attire. As the artist himself says, “the glitter of total emptiness”.

Leafa Wilson
Curator for Intraspace Project
2011

This image is protected by copyright and may not be reproduced under any circumstances

this is beneath a stairwell heading down to the Waikato Museum workshop.