music
Can I sit here?
Nice day, no?
music
You want one?
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.
Forget about a serious artist,
they don't even think you're an artist,
they think you're a clown, you know?
music
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.
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. (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?
(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 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 undefiled, 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 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 this 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. (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. (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
give like that soul to it when it's on
display to the public. Oh, this is bad.
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 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 to 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
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)