(ethereal music)
- Can I sit here?
Nice day, no?
(bright music)
You want one?
(bright music)
I think if you tell your parents, I want to be a clown,
there is that quality of, oh no.
Is it possible that's also the case with an artist,
like, oh no, don't go that direction.
There is this risk of if your work is funny or humorous,
people don't take it seriously.
(bright music)
Forget about a serious artist,
they don't even think you're an artist ,
they think you're a clown, you know?
(bright music) (cardboard thuds)
So I think that's the kind of fear that I,
at some point I recognized
that maybe it was stopping me from what I wanted to do.
So I was like, what will happen if I'm also the clown?
As an artist, you can't escape
not pointing the camera or the finger at yourself.
So I try to exaggerate that aspect,
so then I will be allowed to also exaggerate
everything else about the society.
(bright music)
By doing that, I hope it'll allow the work
to be seen as not myself, but what's surrounding me,
the spectators of this circus. (bright music)
I love that tension of who gets to tell more truths,
is it a clown in a circus who can criticize a society
or a serious artist, let's say, or a serious politician?
(bright music)
When you come to my studio, there are very distinct,
different works existing next to each other.
One thing about the realistic painting
is that it takes a longer time, it's more labor intensive,
in contradiction to this very quick
stage of the cartoonish work.
They are living on two different stages,
extremely slow, extremely fast,
extremely detailed, extremely un-detailed,
extremely skilled, and very de-skilled version of them
in the cartoonish form.
That kind of analogy has found its way all over my work.
There is always this sense of
two things contradicting each other.
There is two energy, there is a clash
of two totally different things
resisting against each other,
and that's how the affect of what I'm producing is made.
It kind of tries to resist to this,
maybe desire from the society to see you as one,
to frame you as one.
And I don't want to be that. (soft music)
In 2008, I was living in Iran, my path was on another route.
(spray gun hissing)
When I was growing up in Tehran,
with the educational system I had gone through,
there are limitations, you know?
What can you be, what can you do, you know?
Almost like just be happy with what you are given.
I was supposed to be an aerospace engineer
and I remember I fell in love with cinema
and with filmmaking.
The Iranian filmmakers that I would think about,
I had imagined, like, how the directors are writing
and coming up with the stories,
telling the stories of us back to us.
(soft music)
I realized, oh my god,
there is a world even more free than filmmaking,
which is the visual art.
And I knew at that point
that I'm going to be a visual artist.
Do you want?
Here.
Lemme just do it for you. (lighter flicking)
What I like to imagine
is that everything I make in the studio, it comes to life.
It gives like that soul to it
when it's on display to the public.
Oh, this is bad.
It's bad for your health too.
(soft music)
The Breakers is one of the grandest mansions of Newport.
It has been turned to a museum
and it's the first time a contemporary exhibition
is being set up inside.
(soft music)
I pick the head, I will ask you to hold it,
or any one of you guys that they are there.
You will hold it, I will have my hammer.
- So once he puts
- Yes. - the pieces down,
then we go out and get the food.
- Exactly. - Exactly.
- The people you have been serving,
you just come between them and you will use your flashlight.
It's totally fine to suddenly sit down
and look under the table
or look at the elephant. - Okay.
We're looking for something.
- Yeah, searching for something.
Exactly.
A lot of my performance
have this sense of like a dream scenario.
Things being tiny bit funny, and things being tiny bit sad
or out of place.
You want to laugh at it and you might feel bad
by laughing at the artist.
I like that confusion of, hey, what's going on?
Forcing everyone present in the room
to take on a role of performing as part of the night.
Dinner is something always happens at the exhibitions
after opening, and I wanted that dinner actually
to be the center part of the exhibition.
I have made a ceramic head shape
of every guest with their face on it,
to turn their heads into plate and bowl for the night.
I'm gonna break the guests' heads.
♪ It's time that we give it up ♪
(hammer clanging)
♪ It just feels like wind ♪
It'll put all of them to do something
that maybe they weren't expecting
to be doing, you know?
(people chattering)
- [Hadi] As much as a critique of society,
the critique of the art world,
it's a critique of the artist, meaning myself too.
I'm always also the butt of the joke, you know?
(soft music)
When you're in public, you are taking chances
of people acting or responding
in a way that you had not imagined.
- Can I be in the movie? - Sure, you can.
Looks like him, no?
Do you wanna have this one? - Mm-hmm.
(bright music)
- [Hadi] Bye.
It kind of frees you,
allowing chance to play a role.
It allows for that de-skilled-ness,
for that imperfection to reappear again.
(bright music)