http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Moonspell/93/96/23
These works of art have a much deeper dimension. I invite you to read "Andréh’s exhibit statement" which I copied below. It is giving insight into the life of gay and lesbian people in Iran.
mir
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| Expo at PCX extended to March - source of image: http://ga-weblog.com |
Andréh’s exhibit statement.
Salam, Greetings
I thank you for visiting Gallery X and viewing my exhibit today.
My name is "Andreh" and I am a submissive leather bottom and contextual slave.
[...]
I am a gay man, collared to the service of Master Tek, in SL and in "real life". I'm also a reporter and photojournalist covering the Middle East and Eastern Europe. You may have seen some of my pictures or our group’s films on YouTube or in magazines. Most of my work is now for NGO's+ working and living in the Middle East.
I was born and grew up in Ramallah Palestine and lived for a long time also in southern Iran. Today I live anonymously, far away from my home. I have travelled to many countries as a journalist, I am lucky. It was from this world of refugees and running, that my Master took me. He has bought me into a new world and a new standard of living inside and out.
I learnt to hide my sexuality, to appease others through silence, a very long time ago. I chose photography as a job when I was a teenager growing up as it gave me a justification for being in places I shouldn't have been otherwise. It has been a way to express things I knew if I put words to, would see me arrested normally.
In Ramallah, most people have been displaced, have been abused or emotionally distressed at some point on some level. As a result, sex here and in Iran, can take on a different dimension to other places in the world I have found. At the same time it's the most and least important thing in the universe. Here, most everyone of my generation has battle scars and wounds and no one has had much time to address them or love enough to heal them. Everyone I have known has left home or plans to do so as soon as they can find a way out. Only the mad ones, like me, keep going back and those that stay, live half lives in deep closets.
I've known I was gay since I was a child, though in my culture to be gay is like being a leper or Satan's own offspring, so if they're not trying to fuck you in their hypocrisy, they try to beat it out you early. I grew up in this culture of fear-as-norm and learned to play with it and even to get off on it.
I enjoyed the risk and clandestine hard hook ups; I was fascinated by the codes of gay military men and the secrecy and signs only we knew. This sense of brotherhood and shared terror which is what I found in what stands for our gay community here, meant that for a long time I wouldn't have had it any other way.
These days, in some places in the Middle East, they hang you now if you’re caught fucking, holding hands, being "too familiar or effeminate", or even if they just suspect you of being gay. They use being labeled as a gay man as a threat to silence political resistance and enforce compliance to religious social law. So life is very different than it was before and the risks are much worse than before, especially for gay men.
Lesbian women don't have it much better but they tend to get to trial more often than men where international aid agencies and what few openly gay collectives there are working here, can advocate for them. Most gay men, boys, and trans people "discovered" in Palestine are just jailed without trial, or shot and disposed of in bombed out buildings. In Iran, we are given mock trials, gathered in public squares and hung from cranes or wooden beams...
The true number of the murder victims in both these countries, will never be known to anyone but Allah.
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| Desire for Freedom - source of image: http://ga-weblog.com |
As I grew up, the early lust of fear as fuel for the pseudo-erotic battle between "them" and "us", quickly lost its power as a sex aid under these conditions. In its place growing anger rose as I watched so many of my friends murdered or sit in prisons forgotten by almost everyone. On my last day in Iran, two friends and a hook up where hung right in front of me along with a man I knew was not a gay man at all and one that had been accused of being gay so a local politician did not have to face his own lusts and past. They were noosed around the neck and then they were drawn up by a crane until they died.
It wasn't even about them being gay or anything they did to harm anyone as gay people; it was about religious politics and power games. Like the reported reality of times during the European dark ages, the worst part is the witch hunting and crowds of ignorant cheering people who have no idea why they are doing what they are beyond what someone else has told them to think.
I lived most days in more fear of my neighbour than the IRG* or the RP**. On this day I stood there and took pictures as it was all I could do. I used my camera to hide my face and my crying. I made it my weapon of resistance and I made sure I was standing with two UN people. They looked after me that night and with their help I left Iran the very next day.
It dawned on me on the flight out of there, that the people doing this murder didn't even say these peoples names when they read out their 'crimes'. They summoned and referred to them only by their initials. It was that day I started to see the excuse that the dehumanisation of people who are gay for what it is, and saw our struggle differently. I saw this debasement of life and of people who express any difference to the demanded norm from a wider perspective.
This is the bulk of my work as a journalist today - to expose this reality. I saw firsthand that this type of twisted psychology doesn't end at the literal practice of murder or in-justice and discrimination or just with the murders of people who are gay.
It is important to me that I say that here, that by standing up the way I do, I am standing only against the abuse of faith and religion, its usurping by faithless people and their manipulation of religion, people and belief for political financial and social control. I do not stand against belief or faith itself, or in defiance against Allah. This is the voice of my heart.
[:::]
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| A whole story behind the Expo - source of image: http://ga-weblog.com |
So, in offering these images and thoughts today, I am hoping to show that I am beginning to make that stand as a gay man and make myself more open to new values. In my own way I am throwing off a very heavy set of leathers that have protected me all my life and claiming the ones I have now earned under Master's guiding Hand.
I felt the need to include my SL spaces in this personal revolt as well. This is my personal revolution. This is my jihad and every aspect of my being is involved. I refuse to allow my survival to be used to 'pinkwash' away the political moral spiritual and emotional reality of life in the Territories and wider Middle East and stand as a proud Man, who is gay, who is different, but just the same as you.
This exhibit has been a hard and revealing step for me; one even today I feel places me at personal risk. Master tells me it’s a new form of risk, one for a new day. So I hope these images and my words speak to you. I hope they tell you about me well. I hope they share insight into our love not just our sex adventures or the hurtful reality of life in non consensual social bondage. I also hope they arouse you. I hope they challenge you whether you're gay or not to think more of the value of what you have.
In my own way I also hope they punch you hard in the stomach and in that big breath in, help to bring to you a new awareness of the plight of gay people at risk, your fellow human beings, who are still suffering and need your focus desperately. We need, you. And I hope that you won’t be able to stay silent anymore when you hear or see injustice about you in any form either.
That's been one of the hardest things to recover from since leaving home. The worlds silence, my own silence. And the silence of my friends voices stolen from the song of this world.
Thank you for viewing my exhibition.
His humble servant
andreh.
+ Non Governmental Organisations
* Iranian Republican Guard
** Religious Police
Visit the expo here:
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Moonspell/93/96/23
Read more about Andreh Omidi and find an interview with him here:
http://ga-weblog.com/exhibition-andreh-omidi-a-gay-and-iranian-artist/
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