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“Pink in Ashes,” a powerful, timely and exquisite exhibition by New York City-based Iranian American artist Azita Moradkhani, was once scheduled to show in the University Gallery at the Star Store Building.
But the sudden and unceremonious closing of that building by the UMass Dartmouth administration in August 2023 led to a rescheduling to the CVPA Campus Gallery, located in a cool gray concrete building, designed by the brutalist architect Paul Rudolph. Unlike the originally planned location, the walls are not high, the space is awkward and there is no natural light.
However, Gallery Director and Curator Viera Levitt, working in partnership with Juli Parker, the director of UMD’s Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality, transformed the cold misshapen box of a gallery into a cozy space, with intimate lighting and one wall painted a delicate shade of pink.
It is entirely appropriate for the dozen works by Moradkhani, which include intricate drawings of lingerie. When she first visited a Victoria’s Secret store after moving to the United States, she was shocked to see such a large store of its kind in public spaces, as in Iran, such places are secret and private.
She went on to do a series of colored pencil drawings of brassieres, briefs and other intimate apparel that she called “Victorious Secrets” that emphasized the connection between sexual representation and national identity and between what is private and what is public.
Her work is not meant to titillate but rather, to educate. The artist notes that the inherited religion of her homeland guided her to question its inherent ambiguities, with regard to gender relationships, social norms and unrealistic expectations for the modern era, even as American society seems to be backsliding into an increasingly repressive stage.
She notes that “the majority of religions put pressure on the female body to conform to certain standards, as with the obligation to cover the body or issues surrounding access to contraception and abortion.” Sound familiar?
She successfully utilizes a pleasurable, eye candy aesthetic to try to shift the viewer’s focus to hope. But when the viewer looks closely at drawings of the undergarments, shadowy and discomforting suggestions of violence make themselves manifest. The caress becomes a slap.
In “Necklace,” a man with an hourglass figure and a bushy mustache is donned in a flowery and frilled light gray corset with a deep V plunging down to mid-belly. In that open V-cut is a light pink garment, decorated with deeper pink flowers, green leaves and a small brown songbird.
Above, there is a fine necklace from which dangles a pendant of a woman in a gas mask holding a protest sign, rendered in Persian. It translates: “until the last breath, woman, life, freedom” which references the poison attacks on numerous girls’ schools in Iran in November 2022. It was their punishment for wanting a formal education.
“Take the Lollipop,” a perfectly detailed drawing, features a pair of hands grasping one’s inner thighs and a tiny pink orb. It is suggestive without venturing into the pornographic.
Parker noted that the Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality wants “to support artists and events that challenge the euro-centric and sexist portrayals of women in society, particularly the ways in which women’s bodies have been constructed under the male gaze. Azita’s work flips that gaze and asks the viewers to explore the boundaries of censorship and violence.”
With a knowing wink and a nod, “Lollipop” does just that.
Beyond the drawings, there are four printed dresses that create a link between art, fashion and sensuality as well as two paper body casts of the artist’s belly and below displayed on the wall in translucent acrylic boxes.
Moradkhani is self-confident and challenging enough to display body casts that depict intimate parts of her body, subverting preconceived notions of the ubiquitous “male gaze.”
“Bird” features flowers both budding and blooming and a red bird with a human head, suggesting the harpies of ancient Greek mythology. Over the years, the term “harpy” has also come to mean an unpleasant woman. Surely she knows that and she’s saying “whatever, deal with it.”
“Becoming” is the other body cast and illustrated on it is a baby in utero, amidst a gardenly womb. Suspended below, there is a tiny pink fetus. And it’s perfect.
Gender issues and conflicts and a host of other concerns and issues including gun violence, economic disparity, animal rights, racial discrimination and deportation are all explored in “Social Justice,” the current exhibition at Gallery X, curated by David Walega, a former freelance correspondent for The New Bedford Light.
He made a point of reaching out beyond the usual gallery membership, inviting Trinidadian artist and downtown gallery owner Alison Wells, Hatch Street Studios mixed media artist and painter Heather Stivison, and political cartoonist, gay activist and local curmudgeon Joe Quigley, among others.
Stivison displays five works of art in a variety of media. Her “Chapter 2: The Wait” features a whitewashed American flag on which she has, with crimson thread, embroidered the figure of a naked, weeping woman. The red stitching is also used to ask the question “With liberty and justice for all?”
The woman knows the answer. Despite successive waves of feminism, the next chapter is yet to be realized. Tiny cotton pouches are adhered to the flag, indicating empty promises. Links of chain hang from the bottom of the canvas. There is too long a wait. And too much weight to bear.
Stivison’s large-scale monochromatic painting titled “Her Inheritance” features her baby daughter (as a stand-in for all children) reaching as a toddler might for a butterfly, but the sky is filled with drones, an omnipresent feature of the surveillance state.
Behind the child is a globe of the Earth, and beyond that, the U.S. Capitol Building. Most significantly is the inclusion of dozens of people behind bars and razor wire, commenting on the full speed ahead approach to deportation favored by the current administration. Stivison clearly is worried — and rightly so — about the world being left to our daughters and sons.
Mandy Fraser exhibits a “Protest Sign for the Women’s March on Washington – Jan. 21, 2017” that features a rattlesnake superimposed over a vivid pink uterus with the legend “Don’t Tread On Me” above it. Fraser notes that it’s “NFS (not for sale) because apparently I still need it.”
Ceramicist Kerry Cudmore addresses a number of hot topic issues including mental health and communication within relationships. Her “Bowl of Misogyny” is a shallow fleshy-pink dish into which a series of insulting words are stamped: unhinged, ditz, crazy, nag, feminazi … and worse.
Her large-scale hanging work of metal and stoneware is called “81% Me Too.” Eighty-one tiny hands are suspended from cords, signifying the percentage of women nationwide that reported being the victim of sexual assault or harrassment in their lifetime, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Wells exhibits “Protest on Union,” a stunning mixed media work depicting a peaceful group of demonstrators marching by the Unitarian Church during the height of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Signs read “PLEASE I CAN’T BREATHE,” “SILENCE IS VIOLENCE,” and “IS MY SON NEXT?”
By far, the most surprising work of art included in “Social Justice” is Eileen Riley’s “Voice of the Fringe.” It is an acrylic painting of Jacob Chansley (a.k.a. The QAnon Shaman), the horn-wearing, face-painted poster child for the Jan. 6 insurrection. If there was ever an iconic avatar for social injustice, it’d be Chansley.
While there is much more to take in at the exhibition, I’ll end with a painting by F. Andrew Taylor simply called “Woody.” Rendered in acrylic, it’s Taylor’s take on one of the many photographs of folk singer Woody Guthrie, holding a guitar emblazoned with the slogan “THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS.’’
It’s a reminder that all creatives, be they performing, visual or literary artists, have tools at hand, be they guitars, paintbrushes or words. Take arms.
“Azita Moradkhani: Pink in Ashes” is on display at the CVPA Campus Gallery, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, 285 Old Westport Road, Dartmouth until Feb 25. A related lecture “Body Image & Power” will be held on Feb 20 at 3:30 p.m. in CVPA Room 153.
“Social Justice” is on display at Gallery X, 169 William St., New Bedford until March 8.
Don Wilkinson has been writing art reviews, artist profiles and cultural commentary on the South Coast for over a decade. He has been published in local newspapers and regional art magazines. He is a graduate of the Swain School of Design and the CVPA at UMass Dartmouth. Email him at dwilkinson@newbedfordlight.org
Editor’s note: This story was modified on Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025, to correct the closing date for “Azita Moradkhani: Pink in Ashes.”
Curious , where is the CVPA Gallery located? Is “pink” still being featured? Thank you!
Hi Martha. “Azita Moradkhani: Pink in Ashes” is on display at the CVPA Campus Gallery, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, 285 Old Westport Road, Dartmouth until Feb 25.