Zanan Magazine (Regart, 2018)

Taklif presenting a study-installation on Zanan Magazine archive, as part of Utopia as Method, curated by Amber Berson, , at Regart. Taklif: تکلیف offers an extensive study of the archive of Zanan magazine (زنان ماهنامه) from sixteen years of its publication. Founded by Shahla Sherkat in 1992 as a monthly magazine, and known as the only Persian publication dedicated to women in Iran, Zanan was seized by the authorities several times over its lifespan. With a six year hiatus starting in 2008, Zanan was relaunched in 2014 under a new name, Zanan-E-Emrooz (Today’s Women), and continued publication with a short, mandatory hiatus in 2015. Reflecting on Women's rights movements in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution, this study critically departs from Utopia as Method to focus on the processes involved in moments of historical disruption and discontinuation—as in the case of Zanan, several suspensions in its publication over the magazine’s lifespan. The study, presented as an installation, takes the archival format and includes: a selection from the magazine’s available issues, risograph reproductions from six of the magazine’s iconic covers, as well as a single cover printed in white ink on white paper. The limited edition single page prints honour the out-of-print issues as a result of the magazine’s several suspensions. The white-on-white format pays homage to the history of white-cover pamphlets distributed among guerrilla activists in revolutionary Iran. The two-channel video installation comprises of one channel displaying a selection of scenes from women's’ rights demonstrations and the women’s civil rights activists’ discussion panels in the early days of the 1979 Revolution, mirrored by a second channel, highlighting some events from the history of Iranian women’s rights movements until recent years. Nima Esmailpour I Golnaz Esmaili I Gelare Khoshgozaran I Shirin Fahimi