In public spaces throughout Iran, two portraits hang side by side: the bearded visages of Ruhollah Khomeini, who became supreme leader of Iran in 1979, and Ali Khamenei, who succeeded him ten years later and remains head of state today. They are the avatars of the patriarchal theocracy to which Iranians have been subject since the Iranian revolution. When schoolgirls scrawled slogans such as 'Woman, Life, Freedom' on photographs of the two men during the protests that exploded after the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in the custody of the 'morality police' in 2022, it was tantamount to heresy: those who criticise the supreme leader can face years in prison.
At Cooke Latham Gallery in Battersea, two mirrors are placed high on the wall directly opposite the front door of the exhibition space. They're easy to miss; if you do glimpse them, you might assume their positioning is some kind of ironic gag. In fact, they are part of '2002', an exhibition by the British-Iranian artist Laila Tara H (b. 1995), and their unassuming placement is a fine example of her ability to comment at once sharply and obliquely on Iranian society. Sitting in place of the portraits of the two supreme leaders, the mirrors are both an emancipatory, anti-autocratic gesture and an invitation to the viewer to look at themselves and appreciate the freedoms they currently enjoy.
Tara H is best known for exploring and expanding the Persian miniature tradition, and most of the work in '2002' comprises works on paper that show off her deft, detailed brushwork. The imagery is not broad in range but becomes more powerful - and mysterious - through repetition: what appears to be the disembodied head of an imperious man, duplicated many times across and between canvases, is actually the head of a woman, hailing from a tradition of depicting androgynous women at a time when hair was far less politically charged. (Amini was arrested in the first place for not wearing her hijab in the manner mandated by the government.) In Conjunction I (2024), these heads, whose invisible hair disappears into the canvas, are interspersed with flames that take a pointedly similar shape. The ostensibly genderless heads take on a very gendered rage.
