The Writing Ourselves series is an invitation to see Black folks in Iranian history
In an effort to redress the erasure and subsequent void around being African and Iranian, being Iranian and of African descent, the Collective is collaborating with talented artists to write ourselves into history, because we have always been there.
Photograph caption reads: "Anis al-dowleh zan-e sogoliye Nasir al-din Shah". Source Photograph: Women’s world in Qajar Iran, mid-late 19th century.
Source: "A painting of Prince Abd al-Samad Mirza and his entourage, held at the Gulistan Palace Museum, Iran. Yahya Zoka, Life and Works of Sani’ ol-Molk, 79."
Source: “Embracing Lovers caught by Housemaids”, signed by Mirza Baba Naqqashbashi, circa 1860. Reprinted in Taj al-Saltana’s Crowning Anguish, translated by Abbas Amanat."
Photograph caption reads: "Yaqut Khan is in his ethnic clothes, which were mainly worn by Africans outside of Iran, 1904." Source Photograph: Zell-e-Soltan/ Kimia Foundation
From Qajar paintings and portraits sometimes including the presence of enslaved people, whether they were eunuchs or nannies or a different domestic in service of the royal family to old black and white photographs of African folks in Iran in the late 1800s. The paintings celebrated by most Iranian artists of the nineteenth century and often referred to as the pinnacle of Qajar art and the photographs often left with little to no context, the Collective has tasked it to re-produce these scenes with a dignified lens, to refocus our attention to those who have been erased, marginalized, peripheralized, caricaturized and ripped of agency, from the “great works of art” to photography that rips Black folks of any agency.
Produced with:
Creative Direction: priscillia kounkou hoveyda
Historian: Prof. Beeta Baghoolizadeh
Artist: Kimia Fatehi