Distinct Chatter from April 18 to May 20, 2022 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Isabella Chilcoat
You’d be surprised by how many people have asked me who Hosna Shahramipoor’s model is for her photographs in the gallery and are shocked to learn that they are self portraits.
To me, their confusion speaks volumes about how necessary her portraits are.
Hosna Shahramipoor, Video Arts, 2022, digital media 0:30s.
A second year MFA candidate in the University of Maryland Department of Studio Art, Shahramipoor already holds BA and MFA degrees both from University of Art, Tehran, and she has been photographing professionally since the early 2000s. Now her recent collection of self portraits occupies the walls in our Stamp Gallery as she wraps up this year’s MFA portfolio. Following a trend of distortion, marring, and fracturing, each portrait exhibits some degree of manipulation to the face or the throat applied directly to the surface of the image with various materials. Shahramipoor employs herself as the subject of each photograph, challenging viewers to look beyond implicit biases that often accompany first impressions – @ my confused gallery attendees – about race and identity based on her appearance. She, as an Iranian woman, is inevitably a member of an often harmfully miscategorized community of people who do not always appear the way others expect, especially in the U.S. Her physical appearance contradicts the Western stereotype that prescribes dark hair, eyes, warm, tanned skin, and a hijab as the standard for Middle Eastern women.
She, distinctly, is not white, as portrait I Am Not White (2022) aptly asserts through a glossy archival paper printed photograph with pins filling the box letter shapes of this phrase over her distant countenance. Furthermore, the gaze of the subject peers straight through the viewer with a mix of severity, solemnity, and exasperation that harmonizes with the portrait’s color palate of rosy browns and taupes. Hung at just the right height, Shahramipoor’s gaze pierces at eye level to reiterate “I AM NOT WHITE,” undoubtedly a worn-out phrase, spoken so often that each utterance, every situation urging that clarification, conversely pierces into the skin like a sharp needle. This piece is not the only portrait intoning a theme of false assumptions, but it is perhaps the most obvious rendering of the concept.
Hosna Shahramipoor, I Am Not White, 2022, glossy archival print on paper.
Video Arts (2022), by Shahramipoor, on view in the second half of the gallery, may easily read as a feeling of fractured identity or wounding. The thirty-second clip features a still portrait of the artist that is progressively obscured by jagged, triangular incisions that resemble pieces of a broken mirror. Starting in a haloing progression around her face, the incisions continue and grow longer as they slice into her seated body covering her entire being until they disappear and the video loops to the beginning. The artist’s act of visceral mutilation through delicate, meticulous execution creates portraits that are nothing short of poetic.
Shahramipoor’s focus on self portraiture and the cool intensity of her stare speak to the viewer beyond archival paper and a projected screen as if saying “face me.” I urge anyone to visit the gallery to witness these portraits in person and to confront their own internalized biases.
Hosna Shahramipoor’s work is included in Distinct Chatter at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from April 18 – May 20, 2022.
For more information on Hosna Shahramipoor, visit the University of Maryland’s Department of Art.
For more information on Distinct Chatter and related events, visit the Stamp Website.