- Slavs and Tatars - Friendship of Nations: Polish Shi'ite Showbiz at Presentation House Gallery until May 26. For more information visit presentationhousegallery.org.
THE dark eyebrow rolls fearlessly into the canyon where many thick hairs lose their lives to tweezers and vanity. Upon occupying the lower-forehead gorge, the brow stretches toward its mate from the other side of the face like lovers reuniting at the airport, ultimately creating a prominent thicket just north of the bridge of the nose.
The unibrow, that defining facial feature associated with virility, stupidity, purity and howling under the full moon, depending on where you live, was the subject of a piece by artist collective Slavs and Tatars.
"They had a big balloon, very popular piece actually," explains Presentation House Gallery curator and artist Babak Golkar, discussing his introduction to the group. "It's called monobrow manifesto."
On one side of the green balloon a swarthy Middle Eastern gentleman with a single brow is pronounced 'Hot!' On the flip side, unibrow-ridden Bert from Sesame Street is labeled 'Not!'
Besides examining the uneasy relationship between beauty and geography, the piece also uses the brow as an entry point to explore differences between East and West.
The work made its mark on Golkar, who quickly invited his colleagues to show their work in Canada.
Four years later the group has arrived at Presentation House Gallery with Friendship of Nations: Polish Shi'ite Showbiz.
BRAHMS' REQUIEM PAGE 16 - IN MY COMA PAGE 17 - JACKIE ROBINSON "42" PAGE 19
"The whole exhibition is about the relationship between Poland and Iran," he explains. "There are influences between the 1979 (Iranian) revolution and 1989 solidarity movement in Poland."
A week before opening, the gallery's floors are a disarray of Polish colours and Persian symbols with the two cultures seemingly melting into each other among highly textured banners bearing phrases of political and religious satire.
One banner bears the slogan "Poland is Half the World." Written in Farsi, the phrase an Iranian might expect to read is "Isfahan is Half the World," referring to the capital city of Iran's Isfahan province.
"This is a twist that the artists are doing to provoke the Farsi-speaking people," Golkar explains. "But also at the same time, there's a history . . . 130,000 Polish refugees from the former Russia were exiled to Isfahan."
Fleeing Nazi invaders, many Polish refugees took shelter in Iran in 1942. While several young men soon left to join the Allied Army, thousands more stayed in Iran for the duration of the Second World War, some for decades more, eventually burying their dead in a Roman Catholic cemetery on the outskirts of Tehran, Iran.
"Who knew Iran and Poland had any relationship? I didn't know and I'm Iranian," Golkar says.
The connection between the nations can be traced to the 17th century when a conception of Persian culture reverberated among the fashionable and deluded Polish nobility.
Sporting sabers and fur-trimmed coats, Poland's elite modeled themselves on their supposed ancestors, a Persian tribe known as Sarmatians that flourished 1,200 years earlier on the shores of the Black Sea.
Measured as the crow flies, there are approximately 3,700 kilometres between Tehran and Warsaw, Poland, but the parallels between the two cultures over the past century are difficult to dismiss.
Said to be an early champion of Ruhollah Khomeini in his pre-ayatollah days, Navab Safavi's mission was to bring Shariah law to Iran in the decade following the Second World War.
Safavi's brand of revolution seems far removed from Vladimir Lenin's quest to bring communism to Russia in the early 20th century, but their propaganda is very similar.
Slavs and Tatars juxtapose famous paintings of both men, each appearing over red flags, looking boldly in the same direction.
Likewise, anti-colonialist Iranian philosopher Ali Shari'ati published a collection of his lectures from the 1970s in a book entitled What Is To Be Done, which was almost certainly a reference to Lenin's work, What Is To Be Done?
For Golkar, bringing the work of Slavs and Tatars to North Vancouver was of vital importance.
"The conversation with the gallery was how this work could introduce something completely different in the arts scene of Vancouver as a whole, but also may be a great springboard to connect to the non-art local community, like the Iranian community for example, or the Polish community," he says.
The exhibition deals with two revolutions a decade apart, but humour runs through many works like a motif.
One works features the message: "Help the militia, beat yourself up." A small placard bears the slogan, 'Between Western alienation and Eastern submission I'll take a mulberry.'
"It is very rare . . . . the work goes beyond humour and successfully deals with politics or religion," Golkar says. "What could we do in our time other than just laugh, right?"
The gallery is planning to supply books related to the exhibition as well as a place to sit down and tea to drink in the hopes of inspiring a discussion.
Asked if he thinks the exhibit will be controversial, Golkar shakes his head.
"If this was shown in Iran . . . I could've guessed that there would be controversy around it but here, who knows?"
