The Schilder (Signs) series uses pictograms. These universally comprehensible symbols are compact, informative images that are easily deciphered. As a form of visual communication requiring no explanatory text, they serve to overcome language barriers. Often found wherever a message has to be conveyed at a glance – in traffic, at airports, railway stations etc. – they are more or less global signs.
But these signs
we see here are not so much street signs as signs on the road of life, showing
faceless women in long veils and men. Crucially, a pictogram has to trigger a
chain of associations, and so we read the signs directly as Women Keep Out or
No Women in the Fast Lane: Men Only. In a tongue-in-cheek reference to the
functionality, clarity and unequivocality of the image for as many viewers as
possible, Forouhar raises the question as to just how far patterns of
observation can be reduced. What is disturbing is that such patterns are by no
means unusual – otherwise, how could we possibly read the pictograms at all?
Forouhar reflects on the structures that affect the way we make distinctions
and addresses this repertoire of signs as problematic.
The fact that
the women are wearing the chador indicates that the signs are situated in the
Middle East. This, in turn, addresses stereotyping of gender roles in Islamic
countries. The space allocated to the women in the signs is extremely
restricted – they have less space than the men – and is defined by a red line,
which forms, as it were, a double boundary. For the boundary between the male
and female spaces is already defined by the veil, which marks the boundary
between the private and the public, between seeing and being seen. In this
respect, the signs are signs of gender difference.
Given the
controversy surrounding the Islamic dress code in Europe, Forouhar’s signs can
also be regarded as a reflection on the way boundaries to otherness are drawn. The
male figures are not specifically designated as ‚Arabs’, but represent a
universal standard. It is the feminine that embodies otherness. This
amalgamation of the eastern and the feminine has a long tradition; the
orientalists of the nineteenth century, for instance, spring to mind. Thus, the
signs represent mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion that are still relevant
today. The East is the Other. As Michel Foucault puts it, „in the universality
of occidental reasoning, there is a dividing line that represents the orient.“.
Like the avant-garde art of the constructivists, Forouhar
seeks an elementary formulaic language on which to base a new grammar and
syntax of the visual. In contrast to the constructivists, however, Forouhar
deploys an over-coding of signs, creating an ironic break.
The signs
show the clichés so clearly that they actually present them as clichés, which
corresponds to an observation of a second order. The word cliché can even be
taken quite literally here in the sense of a print form that can be repeated ad
infinitum. This potential for reproduction is also a characteristic of the
pictogram. The ‚forest of signs’ is infinitely reproducible.
Text by Alexandra Karentzos translated by Ishbel Flat
