CENSORSHIP AND SELF-CENSORSHIP
JE MANGE MA LANGUE | I BITE MY TONGUE
This project on censorship and self-censorship, consists of a series of Persian writing on food: it is a question of mixing elements of gastronomy with linguistic expressions. Thus, Je mange ma langue becomes through the action of eating and erasing, self-censoring and censoring.
If speech takes the form of an opening, donation, an extraction of oneself, eating is on the contrary the movement of a return to oneself, of a compression, of a disappearance in the flesh. Different cultures or beliefs associate by rituals these two elements where the act of swallowing words carries power.
Je mange ma langue, making the words disappear with the food, provokes a self-censorship. If the public joins me at this table, it no longer symbolizes self-censorship but censorship, while others will eat my foreign culture, in the same wake of colonization that censors and devours identities.
TAPIS PERSAN | PERSIAN CARPET
For thirst of knowledge, I have always been a reader and a collector of censored texts. Even if I don't always have the opportunity to read them again, I keep them as precious objects.
Tapis persan highlights the violence inherent in the act of censorship. The censored Persian texts extracted from my readings have become a medium for creating works. I tore these papers in the same way that censorship and self-censorship tear apart the artist's creation. By cutting up several strips of texts to weave them together, I transform these writings into a carpet. Whether it is political texts written by a third party to point out censorship or my own journals that reveal self-censorship, this symbolic work questions freedom of expression. In this process, we move from one sacred object to another: from the book to the fragile and precious Persian carpet, installed on the wall to display its rarity.
The intention is neither to shock nor to provoke but to propose a vision from which a dialogue on censorship and self-censorship in the work can be established, a subject that slides here in Canada under the pretext of a consensual dialogue that often imposes itself as soon as the manifestation of a public discontent.
The artist thanks the Ontario Arts Council and the City of Ottawa for their support.
Founding member and director of the Centre d'artistes Voix Visuelle, Shahla Bahrami lives and works in Ottawa. She has participated in over 90 exhibitions in public galleries and artist-run centers in Canada, Europe and Asia. In 2002, she received the First Prize from Art and Paper VI Biennial organized by Jean-Claude-Bergeron Gallery. She has received grants from the ministère des Affaires culturelles du Québec, the Conseil des arts et des letters du Quebec, the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, the National Bank of Canada and the City of Ottawa. Her works are part of private and public collections such as the City of Ottawa, Loto-Québec and the National Bank of Canada.