UNFOLD from January 30 to April 1, 2023 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Reshma Jasmin

According to the curatorial statement for the Stamp Gallery’s current exhibition,  UNFOLD, the artwork on view explores the function of clothing to “mediate connections between public and private, human and non-human, self and other” in a way that “[complicates] these binaries.” This power of clothing is readily apparent in the work of Hoesy Corona, Elliot Doughtie, and HH Hiaasen. These three artists use modified clothing or sculptures of clothing as a medium to comment on prevalent issues, social phenomena, and injustice; their work is a clear “unfolding” of clothes. 

But UNFOLD houses another artist’s work: Untitled (۱۴۰۱ Series) by Mojdeh Rezaeipour. Rezaeipour’s work differs from the work of the other artists in the exhibit as her individual pyrographic collages on wood contain no textile work or sculpture of textile. The series of panels is titled ۱۴۰۱, or “1401,” which likely stands for the year 2022 according to the Persian calendar. This is likely because the content of her work focuses on the protests in Iran which began in 2022.

In Iran, the government requires that women cover their hair with a hijab. In September, a young Kurdish woman named Jina (Mahsa) Amini was murdered by Iranian police for failing to comply with this gendered law. In response, a series of feminist protests were mobilized by Iranian women in and outside of Iran. Four out of eight of Rezaeipour’s pieces on display at the Stamp Gallery involve women holding their fists up. The raised fist is used in a lot of movements and protests, notably in Black Lives Matter and Black Power movements, but also historically in socialist, feminist, anti-fascist, etc. demonstrations and protests. The nineteenth-century French artist Honoré Daumier shows a man with a raised fist in the c. 1848 painting The Insurrection, which is commonly thought of as the first documented depiction of the raised fist as a symbol of resistance and rebellion. The icon of a raised fist represents resistance, solidarity, and power— all aspects of the ongoing protests in Iran that Rezaeipour highlights in her series.

In conversation, Rezaeipour pointed out the context of the scenes in some of her pieces. What I thought were pretty shades of blue and yellow that made the black and white grainy image of a woman rock-climbing stand out was actually a poignant moment of civil disobedience. In October, Elnaz Rekabi represented Iran in a climbing competition without her hijab, breaking Iran’s strict law. According to IranWire, Rekabi’s brother was held hostage by the Iranian government, so she was forced to apologize for her lack of hijab during her climb, and afterwards her family home was destroyed.

Rezaeipour moved on to describe the significance of the hijab as a dual symbol of freedom and oppression. In one of the two pieces below, Rezaeipour depicts two women, one with a chador (full-body and head covering garments) and one with uncovered hair and three-quarter sleeves, holding their enjoined hands up in front of the Iranian flag (left). Rezaeipour asserts that there is solidarity between women, that feminism is the empowerment of the choice to wear a hijab or not, and that the protests in Iran were a demonstration of said solidarity. In the other panel on the right, a woman with uncovered hair stands with a hijab in her hands in front of the historic Azadi Tower, also known as the Freedom Tower, which is located in Tehran, Iran. When the woman raises the currently controversial piece of clothing to the Freedom Tower, she is actively taking her right to choose; the tower in the background stands as evidence that as an Iranian, regardless of law, it is fundamentally her freedom to choose what to do with her hijab.

Rezaeipour focuses on a piece of clothing that traditionally speaks to faithfulness of women. When clothing, something so close to the body, holds such spiritual significance, it becomes sacred. As a sacred cloth that speaks to the wearer’s personal experience of faith, modern Muslim women wear the hijab to feel empowered by their religion. When covering of hair is made mandatory, the hijab is weaponized to oppress women, an act that is even sacrilegious by virtue of disrupting a woman’s choice to express her faith freely and sincerely. In Rezaeipour’s Untitled (۱۴۰۱ Series), it is seared into wood that when it is a free choice, the sanctity of the hijab remains intact.