Fatemeh Vafaeinejad Retrospective 1997–2007
They are so out of place as to be absurd: a pair of black binoculars hanging from a hook at Counihan Gallery’s recent exhibition ‘Permit Zone’, a show essentially about the painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation work of Melbourne artist Fatemeh Vafaeinejad. Appended with a hand-written message to the observer—’so you can see the top’—their purpose it seems is to supplement the viewing of Vafaeinejad’s small-scale drawings which have been hung well beyond the observer’s natural sightline. As it turns out, the presence of the binoculars is indeed superfluous. For when I dutifully put my eye to the lenses I am able to see… nothing; only a white ‘stain’ framed by the parameters of the device itself.
In an adjacent gallery, silently over-run by a litany of Vafaeinejad’s porcelain birds, (the artists’ signature motif) is a further address to the observer. Hand-scrawled directly onto the wall, the exhibition’s rationale is outlined as follows: ‘Permit Zone installation has multiple purpose. One is to explore displacement, evacuation, and the emotional, intellectual turbulence of current situation of refugees around the world [sic]. The other is my own “permit zone”!’ What then do we make of the additional mediation of the exhibition via an optical device? How does the ‘blind-spot’ introduced by the binoculars, re-mark the gallery space?
Vafaeinejad’s practice spans three major geographical locations—Iran, Pakistan and Australia—and is heavily influenced by traditional Persian art and literature. The work featured in the exhibition was produced in the ten year period following Vafaeinejad’s departure from Iran and her eventual arrival in Melbourne. Despite its protestations to the contrary, it is neither Vafaeinejad’s personal narrative nor her mobility between cultures alone that makes this exhibition compelling