Today's Woman: Ramin Haerizadeh

Ramin Haerizadeh's latest work tenaciously brings new life to familiar forms. With tremendous humour and a deft hand he has composed a new paradigm for artistic introspection with his elusively beautiful macro-scale self-portraits.

In each of the three series presented - Theater Group, Men of Allah and Today's Woman, clear elements of his cultural heritage emerge as the elegant basis for his strong graphic sensibility. He playfully appropriates the traditional Persian ornamentation, patterns and compositions found in his country's architecture, carpets, mirror works and miniature paintings. The static image rarely achieves the amount of visual energy that Haerizadeh imbues his digital canvases with, balancing an implied animation and textural warmth with the cold precision of his technical capacity.

Yet Haerizadeh does not dwell on his chosen material nor is he searching for a means to reintroduce the time-tested visual themes of a great civilization. His is rather a process distinctly removed from chronology and convention, a process that began with a collection of images called Theatre Group.

For this series, Ramin found inspiration in 'Taaziye' theatre, the religious plays popular during the Qajar period (and still active today during Ashura celebrations), whose particularity was that women's roles were played by men, who are still considered the only sex suitable for the profession. One of the most popular scenes was the wedding of the prophet Mohammad, in which the character wearing the white bridal gown is, notably, a bearded man. Taking off on this farce, Ramin has placed his own portrait (himself a thickly bearded man) within the guise of a chador-clad female.