1944 - 2013 Rasht, Iran

Although regarded for her abstract paintings that are often of traditional and contemporary views of nature, Faridah Lashai (1944–2013) was an artist that did not confine herself within a rigid definition of an artistic identity. Her captivating mixed-media video work for the exhibition not only references, but anticipates, the Arab Spring with the downfall of dictators as a consequence of the revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Lybia. The work reflects upon the local sociopolitical situation as well as on the role of art itself and its potential to undermine destructive power on a global scale. A female figure—that of the dame of Arab music, Um Kalthoum—looms over the scene where a dictator dances to her song, titled El Amal, translating to 'hope, desire’ in Arabic, which speaks to the gaze and the power of looking, as mediated by the exhibition. Not unlike the exhibition’s thrust, her approach reveals not only the political but also the poetics of the transmissions of agency across time.