From 18 September to 19 November 2023:
Exhibition You’re so Tehran! by Hannah Darabi
The Centre de la photographie Genève presents the exhibition You’re so Tehran! by Iranian artist Hannah Darabi. It brings together two of the artist’s recent projects on Iranian visual culture.
In Soleil of Persian Square, the artist documents the lifestyle of the Iranian diaspora living in “Tehrangeles”, in the city of Los Angeles. Hannah Darabi discovered this fictional city during her adolescence, thanks to images linked to popular Iranian music. This project brings together ordinary landscapes of Los Angeles and Orange County, portraits of its inhabitants, and objects from popular culture, such as cassette sleeves, song lyrics, music videos from the 1980s and 1990s, and directory pages devoted to the activities of this diaspora. Soleil of Persian Square creates a journey from real space (here) to the imaginary (there), revealing a way of life and a way of thinking embodied in popular culture, which today stands against the moral values of the current Iranian regime.
The series Haut Bas Fragile addresses the question of how to represent the city of Teheran, which has long resisted the photographic image. The images are neither picturesque nor exotic, but evoke an aesthetic of the ordinary and commonplace. Composed of multiple layers, this project proposes an alternative image of Tehran, depicting the microhistories of ordinary city dwellers.
THEMES AND DISCIPLINES
The visits address some of the central issues of the exhibition in an accessible and age-appropriate way. The number and complexity of the themes vary according to the age of the pupils. In all cases, the visit is based on the photographs and videos made by the artist.
Questions addressed during the visit include, depending on the age of the pupils:
- Here and there: what happened in Iran after the 1979 revolution? How does a country’s culture persist in a situation of exile? What are the real and imaginary landscapes in which the Iranian diasporic community lives?
- Popular culture and politics: how does Iranian pop music change before and after the 1979 revolution? How does the displacement of artists affect their production? Why has Iranian pop music become political? How does music that is not authorized by the regime circulate?
- Representation of the urban landscape: how to represent the ordinary city? How can we talk about a territory when it is not present in an image?
- Photography: how does the artist photograph the multiplicity of narratives? What different registers does she use in photography? What is a portrait? How does photography relate to other media, such as text or the moving image?
Depending on the age of the pupils, the subjects and themes covered during the visit include:
- Contemporary history, geopolitics
- Diasporic state, exile, cultural transmission and visual culture
- Iranian popular culture and Losanjelesi pop music
- Representations of the urban landscape
- Photography, art
Venue: Centre de la photographie Genève, 28 rue des Bains, 1205 Geneva
Dates: 18 September to 19 November 2023
Hours: Visits with the facilitator by reservation only from Monday to Friday between 9:00 and 18:00 (school groups can be welcomed outside the museum’s opening hours). Tours without a facilitator are also possible. Reservations are necessary outside the museum’s public opening hours (Tuesday to Sunday 11:00 -18:00).
Age: all school degrees from 8 years old (5P)
Duration of the visit: 45 minutes
Languages: French or English
Price: free for classes
Reservation: via the online form
Further information: by email at visites@centrephotogeneve.ch or by phone at 022 329 28 35
Preparatory visit: Admission is free for teachers wishing to prepare a visit with their class. The preparatory visit is possible during the public opening hours of the museum, from Tuesday to Sunday from 11:00 to 18:00
FURTHER INFORMATION
The detailed description of the exhibition and the mediation offer is available (in French) in this PDF.