The compelling political power of remembrance: Fazilat Soukhakian: Under the Same Sky at Material Gallery

In recent decades, Iranian visual artists — photographers, painters, filmmakers and animators — have communicated through their work how the politics of history and memory are the cogent pivotal driving forces of constructing and preserving identity, which has been under existential threat since the 1978-79 revolution that toppled the Pahlavi dynasty and installed an Islamic republic.

The act of remembrance is essential to their work. For Iranian artists, many of whom now live and work in a diaspora where their homeland is viewed by others with unequivocal belligerence and misunderstanding, their art keeps their histories intact and responds to pejorative media imagery about Iran and its people by showing true images, particularly of women, as unshakeable in their spirit.

At Material Gallery, the current exhibition, Fazilat Soukhakian: Under the Same Sky is a compelling and exceptional example of this artistic mission. Soukhakian, an Iranian-American artist, photographer and scholar, presents a show in two sections which are bonded to each other precisely for the political power of remembrance. The art spans a period of 18 years of creative efforts, including examples of her work as one of Iran’s few female photojournalists and a more recent series of photographs, inspired in part by the grief about her father’s passing. 

The latter series of photographic compositions, comprises graveside memorials where survivors have placed ordinary objects (for example, a rotary dial slimline phone, a red shoe,  a cloth doll, a cassette tape) in memory of their departed loved ones. Soukhakian has completed the composition with unique arrangements of flowers. The viewer is drawn to the objective of interpreting and processing the imagery not only as a representation of a stranger’s personal history but also as a possible collective history, where the cultural or geographical boundaries blur effectively for mutual appreciation and understanding of culture, space, memory and emotion. The works, produced as metallic ultra-high-definition photo prints, are stunning in their clarity. 

In an interview with The Utah Review, Soukhakian talked about a generation of Iranian artists who grew up in “the middle of a paradox,” hearing pre-Revolution stories about their parents and grandparents and looking at their older pictures. “I remember looking at pictures of my parents and not recognizing them because they changed so dramatically. And, it seems unbelievable but when you realize how you can lose the rights to your body, everything changes about you,” she said.

Coinciding with what we know in the West as Generation X, Iran’s Burnt Generation (those born between 1963 and the early 1980s) experienced the Islamic Revolution, their country’s war with Iraq during the 1980s and the dramatic ramifications of societal changes. While it became evident that the Shah’s regime was no longer able to function effectively, there was still a belief that any transition would be facilitated through democratic means. The Islamic regime that replaced the government, however, alienated the Burnt Generation members and when universities and colleges finally reopened, everything had to be approved by an Islamic government. Being vulnerable to profound uncertainty and insecurity, the visceral urges to guard the histories that formed their identities became a paramount force in artistic expression. 

Soukhakian, who is an associate professor of photography at Utah State University, recalled the conversations in her classes as an undergraduate in Tehran, which were taught by professors of photography, many of whom were prominent figures in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East. These class discussions always centered around how photographers should portray social justice. “Every conversation in class centered around the intense sense of suffering,” she explained, adding that it became natural to expect that the underlying political landscape could not be separated from the work. In 2022, for example, many Westerners shared images of the feminist revolution which was sparked in Tehran and elsewhere in Iran by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died in police custody after being detained for not wearing her hijab according to Islamic custom. 

But, as Soukhakian’s examples of her work as a photojournalist in her exhibition portray, the unbreakable spirit of Iranian women has long been a constant in their refusing the orders of patriarchal authorities. Like many other Iranian artists in the diaspora, Soukhakian’s work reflects the dilemma of accessing identity and heritage, especially not knowing if and when they will be able to return to Iran safely and be able to move about freely to connect again with their roots. It has been 13 years since she traveled in Iran. While life was certainly different under the Shah’s regime, there were inequities and discrimination against women just as they existed in the U.S. during the Sixties and Seventies. Undoubtedly, it is a much different set of sociopolitical dynamics currently, as the Islamic authoritarian regime doubles down on unrest and discontent among a growing number of citizens. However, recent protests in Iran also reinforce the warning for women in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, as concerns about stripping away autonomous somatic rights have been magnified, indicating a political project definitely not limited to the Middle East. Like her creative colleagues, Soukhakian sees the stories of oppression that people in Iran have endured as adding to the larger testament and the fight to repel those who try to oppress others in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world.

Soukhakian has taken this concern earnestly in her artistic expression, notably in the body of work she created for Queer In Utah, a project that she took to shortly after moving to the state in 2015. In Iran, to this day, queer citizens face the death penalty but when Soukhakian started at Utah State University, she soon realized the immense fears, tensions and pressures young queer persons face in a deeply conservative state such as Utah. She began the project in 2019, photographing queer couples in affectionate poses in an outdoor setting, identical to the portraits one might see of heterosexual couples in similar framing. 

As she explained in an interview in Portland earlier this year, “This was shocking to me, because I had lived my whole life in Iran, where queer people face the death penalty. It’s so hard to even talk about it there—queer people can’t freely express it. And it’s not just the government. I think there is very little compassion among people because of the impact that religion has on the culture and mindset. They don’t know enough about it. But I never expected to see that in America. People are losing community. They’re losing support, they’re losing family.”

Soukhakian, who is not gay, has received wide acclaim for Queer in Utah, in Utah and abroad. In addition to the exhibition at Blue Sky, a major gallery in the Pacific Northwest, the project was part of a major exhibition last year at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) and was part of an solo exhibition at FotoNostrum Gallery in Barcelona.  In 2023, Soukhakian won the Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers, and Queer in Utah was listed in the Photolucida Critical Mass TOP 50 in 2022. Queer in Utah has also been featured in L’OEil de la Photographie.

The show is available until Sept. 20, when a closing reception will take place at the gallery (2970 South West Temple). For more information, including scheduling appointments to visit the galley, see the Material Gallery website.