Censorship - Taravat Talepasand’s “Woman, Life, Freedom” - Art and Action At Macalester College

The topics of censorship, oppression and youth mental health occupy my mind quite a lot these days:
Jeez, just grow up!   
 

• Toughen them up - they don’t have a clue about stress. Or oppression.
• If you are shielded from dis-ease in your encounters, you’ll miss a lot of good in the world.
• Someone else’s myths should not censor me or anyone else.
• Both my children have had treatment for anxiety.
• Why would you say something to deliberately hurt someone?
• Isn’t it as bad to be cruel to a group as it is to a single person?  Or worse?
• How can you, in your position of privilege, have anything legitimate to say  about this issue to the victims of historic violence?
• Isn’t some art beyond acceptable? To you?  To everyone?

Censorship, Essay 1, Breasts (elsewhere on blog)


Censorship, Essay 2

Taravat Talepasand’s “Woman, Life, Freedom” -
Art and Action At Macalester College

The Art

Macalester College, like its neighbor, Hamline University, has recently dealt with questions of art, of censorship, of attention to the sensibility of others, of religion, of public relations and, no doubt, money. Note that on pages 2, 3 and 5 I describe sexualized, violent and anti-clerical art.

Shortly after Hamline appeared in headlines for labeling as “Islamophobic” a teacher’s use of an Islamic artist’s 14th Century portrait of Mohamed in an online class, Macalester garnered attention for its exhibit of anti-clerical and provocative art by an American woman of Iranian descent.  

At Hamline.  The portrait, shown for a few minutes on remote screens for a few art history students, is beautiful to me in the medieval way that Greek iconography is beautiful. Students knew ahead of time that this piece was to be shown and discussed and had the option to skip it.  Hamline’s response included non-renewal of the instructor, Erika López Prater’s, contract and censoring another professor’s critical opinion from the student paper.  Most of the faculty supported a vote of “no confidence” in the President.  A lawsuit was filed by the teacher alleging that Hamline discriminated against her because of religion. It likely reinforced anti-Islamic prejudice to a far greater degree than it helped anyone in the Hamline or Muslim communities.

At Macalester.  Artist Taravat Talepasand’s family was driven from Iran before she was born.  She teaches art in Oregon.  More information on her is at https://www.taravattalepasand.com.  She says for the Macalester exhibit:

To create art, it is imperative for me to be vulnerable—extracting the personal truths driven by my Diaspora, history, nostalgia, self-awareness, and rebellion. Much of my work revolves around the struggles of womanhood and navigating personal identity as a hyphenated individual. However, I believe that art must possess an element of vulnerability in order to provoke change—socially, intellectually, and morally. In a world where ideas of culture, political and intellectual activities are evolving, what will this change mean for generations to come?

And elsewhere she wrote:

I myself am considered a taboo in that I am a conglomerate of equal, yet irreconcilable cultural forces, my work challenges plebeian notions of acceptable behavior

In my opinion, her work is technically well-done. Some pieces are absolutely beautiful - particularly the four illuminations of beloved Persian poetry by Hafez. Collectively titled: Fai-e Hafez 15,17, 30 and 36.  She studied this centuries-old practice of illuminating manuscripts in Iran.  Other pieces are of more mundane subjects - portraits, the cover of a book of photos of Afro-Iranians by Mahdi Ehsaei.   Ceci Est Une Pipe is Talepasand’s funny turnaround of Magritte’s The Treachery of Images.

Some images are provocatively violent: a man beheading two women (Death to Bitches), a woman dismembering a horned man with a dagger (White Div II), or just plain ugly: Donald Trump’s head repeatedly woven into a rug.  

Most controversial are paintings of beautiful women wearing hijabs or niqābs who draw aside their clothing to show lingerie and bared bodies and to give the viewer the “fuck you” finger. (Blasphemy IX and X). Ceramic pieces feature hijabs and outsized breasts protruding from incomplete bodies. To make a point about these bodies and their forced “unnatural” place in the world.  I think.  (Demons, Dictators, Blasphemy & Man).  

I have not seen any comment on a painting, Desert Storm, that caused me to burst out laughing. This large canvas of reds includes a small section of ten ayatollahs, embracing each other while walking pant-less in a circle, each with his penis edging towards the preceding fellow’s anus. Two wear matching striped athletic socks pulled to mid calf.  All wear little turbans.

I felt closest to a jeans jacket with patches and badges bought in Iran which is suspended from a peace sign hanging from a hangman's noose. IRAN IRAN IRAN IRAN. I would have fancied such a jacket in my youth.  

An ayatollah’s portrait is ripped off a piece of currency and reproduced like a burned leaflet, using hash oil as medium. LIONINOIL I. Talepasand’s mother is shown with a phallic monument in the background next to a disguised woman who helped her escape when the clerics began their reign of terror.  Hafez, September 9, 1978.

The story behind Jesus Meets Mohamed chimes nicely with the Hamline controversy - Jesus as Talepasand’s childhood Ken doll and her beloved teddy bear as Mohamed, nodding to the English teacher in Sudan who was convicted of blasphemy for allowing her 4 year old to name his teddy bear Mohamed.

The title of the show: WOMAN, LIFE, FREEDOM should guide the viewer’s thinking as we react to the provocations of the pieces and their titles.  The introduction in the catalog ties the art directly to the oppression and violence and silencing, indeed the political murder of people in Iran, particularly women.  This was before ultraconservatives (perhaps government approved) began using poison gas in schools to shut down women’s education and intimidate political opposition.  

The show is often intentionally outrageous and insulting and garish and provocative - it is Islamophobic, it hates a particularly cruel and oppressive form of Islam.  It uses symbols of Islam to critique repression, not Islam as a whole.

Her eponymous painting, Fuck This Shit, says it directly.  A sentiment I endorse.




Art, Prejudice, Offense, Reaction, Activism

Depictions of and critiques of the holy are fertile grounds for dispute.  Iconoclasm is not confined to adherents of Islam. One meaning of iconoclasm is the belief that creation and veneration of images of religious figures (icons) is sinful because it diverts believers from true faith and worship of the god(s) that center their belief. I read that many  Jewish people believe the Hebrew name of their god should only be uttered in the Temple in Jerusalem and to do otherwise is blasphemous.  I can imagine my Puritan ancestors tearing crucifixes and paintings of Jesus out of churches in England and perhaps even murdering “Romish” priests who persisted in such idolatry.

Some Macalester students, led by a Muslim woman, objected to the juxtaposition of the hijab and unclothed women’s bodies.  This student stated that she was equally opposed to the Iranian regime but felt insulted, as a woman who chooses to cover herself, by this art.  She thinks Macalester should not be a part of delivering such insults to her and to others.  

Macalester, where the Islamophobia-accused former Hamline art teacher now teaches, closed the exhibit for one weekend in January, covered the windows with black curtains and considered “what next?”

The artist noted the irony of duplicating the black covering of women’s bodies by the ayatollahs by Macalester and says she was censored. Macalester’s best “performance art" of the decade!

Macalester quickly removed the curtains and reopened with the exhibit itself unchanged.  Some gauzy frosting on the glass walls of the gallery was added to block the view of persons who would not want to see it.  A warning sign and a leaflet setting out the students’ objections and a QR code for a petition was placed on the gallery door.  The College’s statement read:
We recognize and support the value and importance of artistic expression, including provocative art used in protest and social activism, therefore, the exhibit will remain open. We also recognize community impact and understand that pieces in the exhibition have caused harm to members of our Muslim community.

What about the nudity in Talepasand’s art? Objections to displays of uncovered women’s bodies as exploitative are sometimes legitimate - but the artist's use of female bodies here aligns with Judy Chicago and Georgia O’Keefe and Annie Leibowitz and Cindy Sherman.


Thirty or more years ago here in Minnesota, Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon developed a powerful argument that all pornography is violence against women, e.g. harm,  but this contention is not voiced here.  Dworkin and allies persuaded  the City Council in Minneapolis to classify pornography as a form of illegal sex discrimination - though it was vetoed by the mayor and a similar law in Ohio was ruled unconstitutional.


Would McKinnon and Dworkin say Blasphemy IX is pornography? They defined it as “graphic sexually explicit subordination of women … in postures of sexual submission or servility or display.…” While Still Life: Half Sin depicts partially unclothed women with bare breasts and one posed with legs spread to display her crotch, the show radically opposes subordination and servility and is, in my view, not pornography.  I have little doubt that both Iranian clerics and their conservative Christian counterparts in the U.S. would hang that label on this art.

I expect that Tallepasand would see no cause to paint and sculpt and draw breasts together with hijabs in the absence of the ayatollahs and their ilk. I will leave it to feminist artists to better explain how depicting hijab-wearing partially unclothed women highlights the connection between the struggle of women to control their bodies and the violent reaction of the Islamist state.

I believe that some people will be offended when viewing this art.  Are they harmed?  Maybe.

I am unhappy with any prayer outside of a religious event, but I keep quiet in others’ spaces.  I am not particularly patriotic, but I am offended by commercial use of the U.S. flag.  Some indigenous people must feel traumatized by the sight of a torture device -  the Cross - in art and elsewhere - surely it reminds some of the “Christianizing” at deadly boarding schools.  But I haven’t yet heard them demanding removal of that symbol from public view. We are all offended sometimes.

I saw a punk rock group’s advertisement that was a photo of a priest with a jovial expression blessing Nazi troops as they executed Jews and pushed them into a ravine. The scene is revolting.

Are Catholics empowered by their identity and feelings of insult to demand its censoring?   Are Jews?

What if it was fake - a photo-shopped mockup?  

What if the band it promoted was a neo-Nazi skinhead outfit?  (I don’t believe that was actually the case.)

Tragedies do, of course, happen because of prejudice against particular beliefs.  My ancestors were religious refugees, including some who were enslaved because of their religion.  Some of my cousins were killed in Illinois because they joined the Mormons - this was fewer than 200 years ago.  And yesterday’s and today’s hate crimes do grow out of cultured hatred.  And art in its many forms plays a role in cultures.

How should one react to controversial and offensive art?  Yes, a degree of respect for expression and for others’ beliefs and culture is something to support.  But do reject moral relativism - the view that a culture can override fundamental human morals.  As a Macalester student from Burkina Faso who’d left Islam behind for Christianity  told us:  “I feel that when people say: ‘It's my culture’, they just want to stop talking.”

We need culture and arts that get us talking and challenge our prejudices and beliefs and promote understanding of others and our common belonging to one world, one humanity with beautiful and ugly differences among us all.   And art should also be an invitation to activism and engagement.

Isn’t some art truly beyond any reasonable boundary?  And then what? What if an artist depicted the Obama daughters in degraded postures?  What if the Nazi-priest-slaughter of Jews art was used to promote a neo-Nazi band at Macalester?  Shouldn’t we stand up and protest the lies, the horror, the degradation, the promotion of prejudice?  Shouldn’t we demand that these young women be respected? Shouldn’t we take action to be sure that the truth of the Holocaust is not forgotten or obscured, and demand that the band and promoter disavow such views!  Drown out the band with John Lennon’s Give Peace A Chance!  Demand that alternative art be accorded its own space.  

So I strongly disagree with the students’ call for censorship, but applaud their engagement, so long as they are focused on those in power - not “punching down” on people who are not agents of oppression.

The Roles of Institutions - Religion and Student Health


It is wrong to ask non-Islamic institutions to adopt one of several views of Islamic  dogma.  This point is made by a Macalester anthropology professor from Sri Lanka (a place of violent religious intolerance):
That Macalester has chosen to take sides on the issue of blasphemy in Islam — a matter for Muslims to work out among themselves and is none of Macalester’s business — is deeply troubling. It has been reported that Iranian students on campus supported Ms. Talepasand’s work and the exhibition, but their views apparently were considered less significant than those of students who had demanded censorship.

Michelle Goldberg of the NY Times (reprinted in Star Tribune) wrote about this dispute and contended Macalester has ventured far down the slippery slope of censorship. Unfortunately she omitted the first sentence of the College’s statement (“We recognize and support the value and importance of artistic expression, including provocative art used in protest and social activism….”) in her essay leading up to her generally apt point:
I think this moment, when we’re facing down a wave of censorship inspired by religious fervor, is a good time to quash the notion that people have a right to be shielded from discomfiting art. If progressive ideas can be harnessed to censor feminist work because it offends religious sensibilities, perhaps those ideas bear rethinking.

Goldberg also left unaddressed some serious features of current circumstances, in particular youth mental health, that we should consider when looking at a college’s responsibilities.

The same week as Goldberg's opinion was published, the Times reported on mental health surveys of teens showing that a huge number of them, especially girls, are in crisis.  In 2019, one in three high school students and half of female students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, according to the U.S. Surgeon General.  The number of teens who seriously considered attempting suicide increased by 36%; and the share creating a suicide plan increased by 44% in a decade.   

These are now the students at Macalester. The prevalence of anxiety and depression are factors college presidents must take into account. One student wrote to the Mac Weekly: “I had panic attacks and nightmares about the art, and I could not even tell my community back home about it for fear of hurting them too.”
 
Perhaps this reaction is overwrought but it must be real for that person. There must also be students walking through campus carrying a burden of sexual violence or of truly islamophobic acts.  Can’t we expect that some survivors may react badly to some of the Tallepasand art?

I still get angry whenever I see the St. Paul Winter Carnival Vulcans - this more than 40 years after an acquaintance was sexually assaulted by the Vulcan Krew.  A part of the St. Paul Winter Carnival, the masked and costumed white male Vulcans symbolize the return of spring to defeat winter but have a history of assaulting women and continue their practice of blackening others’ faces with grease paint. To me, that is an echo of rape-themed fertility rites of old, even though they say they now ask permission.  That is a form of performance art.  To which I object and which keeps me away from my city’s Carnival.

I don’t know how persons with life experiences of assault and extreme prejudice would react to Tallepasand’s art were they to encounter it without warning. It is not for any of us nor for school leaders to just stand off and dismiss their trauma. Whether too much attention to insult may itself engender trauma is a subject to be attended to as well.  

I’d hope that most people, including those who might be offended by viewing art that is to them blasphemous or sexually exploitative or gratuitously violent, could debate it. Wouldn’t it be best to deal with the insult with intelligence and understanding and, by absorbing and then thoughtfully rejecting such art, be stronger for it?  And maybe improve the artist in the meantime?   But how is that to be achieved?  A question for educators and artists, not for me.  

And if it is beyond the pale, as the Nazi-priest-slaughter of Jews photo could be, activism and engagement is the best response.  Take on the message and take on the messenger with more and better art and speech.  Boycott the Winter Carnival and urge those you know to do so while the Vulcans still play-act rape. Become an activist and we will be better for it.
Conclusion

Macalester's “pause, gauze and reopen” response was a reasonable way to handle this situation. And to the offended students?  Hurrah for speaking out, if you are also engaging with these ideas.  Activism, enlightening conversations, strengthening tolerance and sharpening of criticism - proper and necessary goals for art like WOMAN, LIFE, FREEDOM and for colleges like Macalester.