Ala Ebtekar is back in Dubai with a solo exhibition exploring Iranian’s past and present. Emily

When Ala Ebtekar was a child growing up in the United States, his mother read to him each night from the Shahnameh, the epic Presian poem that is both a mythical and historical account of Persia.

Today, Ebtekar is a California-based artist whose works draw heavily on his upbringing as the son of Iranians in a community with many other members of the Iranian diaspora.

His current exhibition, 1388 — the year on the Iranian calendar that runs from 21 March 2009 to 20 March 2010 — at Dubai’s The Third Line gallery is the latest of Ebtekar’s work that deals with blended identity.

1388 is a series of photos of women shot against light backgrounds and overlaid with images from Persian mythology painted in Ebtekar’s distinctively simple acrylic and ink lines.

The most distinctive series shows two models, their faces in various exaggerated expressions.  Atop their heads, Ebtekar has drawn the helmet of Rostam, the hero in the Shahnameh. In the mythology, Rostam makes a helmet from the head of the demon he slays.

“That’s loaded with meaning, right?” Ebtekar asks rhetorically when he explains some of the works. The expression on the helmet matches the expressions of the women. 

All of people photographed in the series are women, and the question “Why?” elicits the exclamatory “Because women are the future” from Ebtekar. Reading material from The Third Line, which sponsors local and international artists, says that 1388 is partially a celebration of women. Ebtekar says his mother, in addition to reading Persian mythological epics to him at night, was also “an ultrafeminist.”

The women are presented in a way that demonstrates both femininity and strength. They wear eyeliner and warrior’s helmets. Others wear roosari (scarves) but stare steadily into the camera.

The mythological personas Ebtekar ascribes to the photographed women are often masculine. Rostam is often painted as a heavily bearded man. The Simorgh — the powerful bird sought after in Mantiq at-Tayr’s The Conference of the Birds — is referred to with masculine words in the epic. In 1388, women take on the bird’s attributes.

Another series, this one of three photographs, shows a peaceful-looking woman with her eyes closed and flanked by armoured women.

One of the armoured women is wearing a green wristband — the kind of rubber cause bracelets popularised by Lance Armstrong’s Live Strong campaign. This one is green, the same colour worn by protestors after the recent disputed presidential elections in Iran.

Ebtekar said he asked the woman before he started shooting if she was comfortable with the message the colour could convey to viewers. She said she was, so he took the photos with the wristband on.

The wristband, as with many of the objects donned by the models, may be interpreted differently by viewers.

“In California, there is pre-revolution nostalgia and then an Iranian-American aesthetic,” Ebtekar says.

He is a clear advocate of the idea that interpretation of art should be open. When initially asked what mythologies 1388 draws on he declines to be specific.

Ebtekar is familiar with varying interpretations of his work.

The exploration of both historical and mythological impact on the present, and the present’s interpretation of the traditional can be personal. Last spring, one of Ebtekar’s works, a collage in which acrylic ink images of weaponry and the mythological horse Al Buraq painted over prayer book pages, was removed from the wall because of concerns over cultural sensitivity.

“It was going to happen sooner or later, but it was also disappointing because you hope people get past their own judgments,” he says.

emily@khaleejtimes.com