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Mahsa
Tehrani
“As
a
result,
gender
is
not
to
culture
as
sex
is
to
nature;
gender
is
also
the
discursive/cultural
means
by
which
“sexed
nature”
or
“a
natural
sex”
is
produced
and
established
as “prediscursive,”
prior
to
culture,
a
politically
neutral
surface
on
which
culture
acts”
―
Judith
Butler,
Gender
Trouble
Mahsa
Tehrani
has
long
engaged
with
sculpture
making
as
an
act
of
questioning
heteronormative
mechanisms
of
art
production;
not
only
in
her
choice
of a
media
that
are
traditionally
associated
with
domestic
craft
e.g.
Fiber,
woven
textile,
etc.
but
also
in
her
artistic
strategies
of
rendering
and
size.
As
an
emerging
artist
and
student
of
arts
her
objects
were
often
modest
in
size
and
in a
gallery
setting,
quite
easy
to
miss.
However,
as
one
observing
and
following
her
works
over
the
years,
I
find
in
her
recent
works
an
increasing
urge
to
rebel
against
a
predetermined,
male
dominated
context
that
frames
"sculptor"
along
the
same
lines
of
heteronormative
womanhood.
Her
recent
works
are
quite
outspoken
and
ambitious
in
the
way
she
deals
with
notions
of
motherhood
and
gender
as
social
constructs
through
manipulating
traditional
forms
of
art
making.
Blank
canvas
in
her
recent
works
is a
reminiscent
of
minimalist
art
with
stylized
subtle
projections
of
spermatic
shapes,
but
minimalism
gets
a
splurging
treatment
of
vaginal
blood
and
swirling,
fetus
like
shapes
and
sudden
eruption
of
red
crevices
on
neutrality
of
the
white
surface.
Her
recent
show
troubles
the
"politically
neutral
surface"
of
sex
and
childbirth
as
natural
by
laying
out
the
same
disturbing
details
deemed
inappropriate
to
demonstrate
in a
patriarchal
setting;
yet
in
doing
so
she
employs
the
same
quintessentially
male
dominant
language;
her
art
speaks
to
domesticity
as
an
act
of
subversion.
Golnar
Yarmohammad
Touski
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