Nassem Navab with HereIn

Zanan, 2017, 3D-print, 6 x 4 x 4 in.

[Image description: A white figurine stands on a Persian rug. The bottom half of the sculpture features the lower part of a figure wearing a short dress and combat boots, with fabric draped down their sides. The top half is an abstract tangle of stringy plastic.]

Working in digital media, sculpture, and installation, Nassem Navab explores the culture of Iran and its diaspora. Her practice probes complex issues around socio-cultural expectations and individual agency, and how these dynamics follow the children of immigrants through changing location and time. Navab talked with HereIn about how she approaches these subjects in her mixed-media work. 

HereIn: Your experience as an Iranian American woman is central to your artistic practice. Can you tell us a bit about your family history?

Nassem Navab: In my work, I’m focusing on being a child of immigrants. I’m the only one in my family who was born in the U.S. My parents emigrated in 1984, first to Europe and then to the U.S. They left because of the Iranian Revolution, for the better life that many immigrants are seeking. I feel like Iran is different than a lot of Middle Eastern countries because the revolution happened around forty years ago— it’s really alive for a lot of people. They still tell stories about what it was like in the past and what they thought Iran would be like after the revolution. Those were stories I’ve known most of my life. Even though I don’t feel like I know Iran that well, because I was born and raised here, I still know the old Iran, in a way. 

When the Iranian Revolution broke out in 1978-9, it was a big transition from a secular government to a religious one. For example, when the Islamic Republic was established, there were laws put in place that women had to cover themselves. Before, it was a choice. That’s a big signifier for a lot of Iranians— it became a religious country, the Iran we see now. A lot of people I speak to here in the U.S. don’t know how recently it happened, and that Iran was a completely different country before the revolution. When many Iranians came to the U.S. around that time, the didn’t wear coverings because they didn’t have that history. That’s something I talk a lot about in my work. 

My grandmother would always send me a chador for my birthday. She was in Iran and she would buy fabric, go to the tailor and get it sized for me, and mail it to me. I would get it in the mail and was like, “Mom, what am I supposed to do with this?” My mom would fold it up and put it somewhere for me. She was like, “This is something nice.” It was something sweet my grandmother did. I don’t like that wearing a covering has to be law in Iran. I’m against the fact that there’s no choice. If someone is religious, go for it. If that’s what you like, you should wear it. It shouldn’t be something that’s torn apart, it doesn’t need to be ripped or burned as a signifier, or banned by law, like in some parts of Europe. 

Transparent, 2018, digital photograph

[Image description: A photo of a smiling Iranian American woman standing against a white wall. She has dark hair and wears a sleeveless, close-fitting black-and-white striped dress. She has a sheet of transparent plastic draped over her head and around her face.]

HereIn: The chador appears frequently in your practice. When did you first use it? 

Navab: I made a work that includes a transparent hijab in 2018. I was thinking about what’s behind the veil and how sometimes it over-sexualizes the women wearing it. The material I’m using in Transparent is a furniture-protecting vinyl, which you see in my work after this piece. I started obsessing over this material and I made it into chadors. I feel like the hijab, or the chador, is supposed to be used as a device for modesty, not allowing men to see your hair that smells good and falls in a certain way, or letting men see your curves. But does it actually do that? Or does it hyper-sexualize women because men want to see what’s hidden behind the veil even more? 

Zanan, 2017, 3D-prints, 6 x 4 x 4 in. each

[Image description: A closeup of a set of nine white figurines placed next to each other in three rows. They all feature a woman wearing a chador, short dress, and combat boots.]

HereIn: The figures in your Zanan series also wear a chador. How did that series originate?

Navab: Zanan means “woman” in Farsi. There was a magazine in Iran called Zanan that was all about women’s style, and it got shut down many times. These works are 3D-printed pieces and I made about fifty of them— I wanted to make an army of them. I modeled them after myself. I’m wearing one of the chadors that my grandmother gave me, and a revealing dress and combat boots. On the back of the chador there are pyramid studs on the edge and a patch on the back, signifying a punk girl, one that’s supposed to have a unique identity. Punk dress is a way of pushing the limits. These little dolls are kind of like toy soldiers. An army of women who are fighters but are also wearing the chador, and are also revealing their bodies. They are changing the chador. I see this work as creating a dialogue about what people say about women who are wearing chadors—that they are all the same, an undifferentiated mass of people. But they actually are not. They are unique and individual, have different personalities and different characteristics. I want to push the limits of what Muslim women and their position in the world are supposed to be. 

HereIn: Some of the sculptures have distinctive features that look like glitches. 

Navab: I had a lot of glitch that was happening during the 3D-printing process, but I actually thought those were interesting. It added to the uniqueness of these pieces. Most of the glitches happened in the head, the face, which I thought was symbolic. All the pressure and struggle that comes on our shoulders as women, how we’re supposed to fit in in society as Muslim women. What does it mean to be a Muslim woman? If you look at me, do you see a Muslim woman? Someone who’s tattooed, lives as an artist, does whatever she wants to do? I feel like there’s this pigeonhole we’re put in without realizing that there’s a lot of uniqueness to us. 

HereIn: When did you first use the plastic material that has become so central to your work?

Navab: Transparent was the first time I used it. I wanted to take photographs of people wearing a transparent chador with whatever else they wanted. I started to think about what material I wanted to use and started getting closer to this plastic material that I saw every day in my parents’ house. You could go to the fabric store and buy it by the yard. My mother would use it to cover our kitchen table and the coffee table to protect the furniture from my brother and me destroying it. It would turn yellow from months of use, so we’d go to the store together and buy it. It’s a material that’s very tactile and I have a lot of memories of sitting on it, it getting hot, and peeling myself off. I remember feeling that plastic-ness. 

Design for Cover Protect Decorate, 2018, vinyl and digital print, 38 ft. x 36 in.

[Image description: A graphic drawn in thin black lines on a white background. Squares and rectangles are laid out in a grid. Inside some of the squares are women wearing chadors, and in others are furniture and objects in Middle Eastern and European styles. Text in some rectangles reads,  “Clear Polished Cover. Multi-purpose use. Cover, Protect, Decorate. Textile, Los Angeles,” and in others the same text is written in Farsi.]

Cover Protect Decorate came from looking at this material a lot in my studio. When you purchase it, there’s an infographic on the back of it, which I mimicked. It’s in English and Spanish, and it says, “Multi-purpose use, Cover Protect Decorate. Clear polish cover,” and there’s a State of California Prop 65 warning that it can cause cancer. So I took that and translated it into Farsi. The graphic features all these objects— framed in squares— to give you an idea of what you can cover. I took those symbols and started putting women or people that you could cover, in addition to furniture. Some are Middle Eastern but some aren’t, like the winged chair or the dresser that are more Western. The idea with the figures is that as a woman, you have to cover, protect, and decorate yourself, as well. 

Cover Protect Decorate, installation view, 2018, vinyl and digital print, 38 ft. x 36 in.

[Image description: The corner of a gallery space with white walls and a brown floor. On the left, a long white scroll with black graphics on it hangs from the ceiling and reaches the floor. On the right, a shelf holds a cluster of small white figurines.]

When I first made it, it was 38 feet long to reflect the 38 years since the Iranian Revolution, since it became law for women to wear a covering to go into public spaces. The work looks like a scroll or fabric-by-the-yard, and when you pull it the graphics unroll. At the beginning, it features objects and also women, mostly women from the 1970s wearing bikinis and minidresses. All the women in these drawings I took from historical photographs, including Iranian movie posters from the 70s. As you keep unrolling the scroll, you start seeing that some of the women are covered and some are not. You keep going and then every woman is covered. You begin to see images of women in protest, putting their hands up, fighting what was happening in Iran. At the very end of the 38 feet, you see another revolution; the women are showing their hair underneath the chador and hijab, you start seeing iPhones, sunglasses, more “fashion.” They are breaking out of the squares that contain them, pushing against the regulations that are placed on them. 

Refuge, 2019, transparent vinyl and found objects

[Image description: A set of European-style living room furniture on a Persian rug, arranged in a gallery space. The rug, coffee table, sofa, chair, and cabinet are covered in transparent plastic. 

HereIn: In what direction is your work heading now?

Navab: I’m starting to move toward talking more about the immigrant experience. There were people in my grad program from all these different cultures and we had a lot of similarities, especially in our homes. The objects my parents had in their house are similar to objects my classmates grew up with. That made me wonder, what does it mean to be in this third space that exists between two distinct cultures, creating your own identity? Which I feel like I am. I’m making Persian food but I’m making it vegan. If I went to Iran and made it for my family there, they would be confused. Even I am a little bit confused by my own identity. And I think there are similarities in a lot of cultures. 

We’re connected by objects. With the objects I started wrapping in Refuge, it’s not a couch or a chair; it becomes something more than that. Some of the objects I brought from my parents’ home because they were just so perfect. I wanted to create an immersive experience that a lot of children of immigrants could connect to. 

Refuge (detail), 2019, transparent vinyl and found objects

[Image description: A front view of a plastic-covered rug, coffee table, and sofa. On top of the coffee table are two cups, an ashtray, and Kleenex box, each covered in plastic.]

HereIn: Through the act of wrapping it, the furniture becomes not as usable. A sofa is meant to be sat on, it’s meant to be comfortable. When you’re using a sofa covered in plastic, you’re always aware of how uncomfortable it is. 

Navab: It’s an interesting paradox. I’m sitting on it, I’m aware it’s a sofa, but is it actually that? Am I guarding it? Protecting it? Why? Is it that we’re in a traumatic space and trying to protect ourselves from the outside world infiltrating our home? Is this new space affected by the country that we fled from? We brought those traumas and we’re dealing with them in our new home.

HereIn: That brings up this idea of not being safe in your own home, a space that is supposed to be your safe environment— whether it’s physical safety or the safety of feeling like you can spill on your couch and it’ll be fine.

Navab: Often I would do something like go to a protest or buy a subversive book and talk to my dad about it on the phone. He’d say, “Be careful.” This act of him still fearing things is very bound up in his fears and anxieties about the revolution. I feel like I do have fear, as a child of immigrants, but a lot of it is because of my parents’ fears. I will take those generational traumas with me. I’m trying to talk about that in this work. I hand-sewed everything in the Refuge installation. I hand-sewed the curtains, the leaves of the plant, I reupholstered the couch, I hand-sewed all the plastic coverings. I wanted to show the obsessiveness of that trauma, but also a lot of love and care.

This conversation has been edited by HereIn and the artist for length and clarity.