It Seemed the Better Way

At first glance, the work ‘It seemed the better way’ is very specific as the artist tackles fragments of her family’s history. She made two video performances where she visited a graveyard in Iran where her uncle is buried. The unsettling element lies in the fact that her uncle died very young, and his death had to do with particular political circumstances. He was a member of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, which got him arrested in 1982 and later executed. His execution represents another side of the revolution as he represented a radical dissident to those who claimed the revolution. However, the ideological tensions didn‘t cease when he passed away; rather, they continued as state agents repeatedly broke the tombstones. And the families keep on repairing and replacing them. And interestingly, even though these tombstones are not public monuments, they certainly have a public role within the current political climate. As it happens, when historical rupture occurs, such as war or revolution, it affects people physically and emotionally, and symbols often represent ideas behind these consequences. In that sense, public monuments in one political context could be celebrating certain ideals, while in the other, the very same monuments are destroyed or left to oblivion. For that reason, there is a parallel between public monuments and the public role of tombstones, especially because of the ideological meaning they carry.

Elham Rahmati treats the tombstones as if she would be asking, “What does that political past mean today, and what to do with it?”. While visiting the graveyard in Iran, she made two videos on her mobile phone. The poor quality of the videos emphasizes her performance rather than the video as an artifact. Her gestures are very simple. In one video, she just walks around the graveyard, passing by the broken tombstones, while in the other video, she sits on a broken tombstone and washes it, and tries to glue the broken pieces back together. Thus, “the tombstones represent decades of conflict between the state and its oppositions, a conflict that needs different ways of resistance if it is ever going to end.” The gesture of cleaning a monument brings into mind a performance piece Washing, Tracks, Maintenance: Outside, 1973 by Mierle Laderman Ukeles. The artist was scrubbing the exterior steps of Wadsworth Atheneum, bringing to light maintenance tasks which are often completely invisible and often expected of women. However, making such a gesture as a performance means bringing in a completely different set of values in a museum because she is asking Where are the female artists in the museum? In that sense, Elham Rahmati, by washing and repairing the tombstone, brings about a new set of values and transforms the invisibility of familiar scenery into material for public discussion. She raises the whole question of the historical and political background lying behind these broken/ repaired tombstones. In other words, her question could be – what are the fruits of the revolution?