ERICA KERMANI

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ZULF IS BELOVED


Zulf is Beloved, experiments with hair, is a series of sketches for addressing hair loss, the removal of hair, and gender and sexuality for the Iranian femme feminist.


Gracious in Defeat

Collaboration with Jeremiah Stewart
Installation, Corkboard, paint, wood, flowers, video projection on fabric
2014

The ghost of hair haunts as a staged scene in a 2-D studio set.  Tombstones and graveyards of the fallen, yet never forgotten.





Hairbrush with Extensions

Laser-cut acrylic, human hair
2015

I was two, so why did you freak out?
Boy cut, girl dress.
I was twenty-three, so the appropriate solution would be hair extensions.
Marriage materials.

Exhibition:
SONYA Art Walk, 2015
Persian Violet, or Are you a Qajar Slut?

Human hair, flower petals, ink transfer on canvas
2014

The word for hair in Farsi is 'zulf', used, not in ordinary conversation, rather in love poetry to praise the beloved's hair. Or to describe hair that is inappropriately displayed.  Seduction or shame.  The Persia of Qajar celebrated the fluidity of gender and sexuality.  Westernization removed hair from the body to equate with modernity and removed femininity from the male land and the male sun.  I gave hair back to Qajar, for what was once lost into otherness is now found in the future perfect.

The violet fades.  Grab my nipple.

Exhibition:
Group show, The Rising Arts Gallery, Brooklyn


© Erica Kermani 2023