Cima Rahmankhah

Region: Pacific Coast

Website: http://cimarahmankhah.com

City / State: Los Angeles, CA

My work deals with the cultural, social, and political stigmas assigned to women in Iran, focusing on how the Persian language itself is a vehicle for propagating these stigmas. I am interested in creating awareness of the pernicious effects of language; how old idioms, new phrases, and daily words form the foundation for locating women as secondary citizens in Iranian society. I am not forcing a solution, nor seeking a compliment through my images. I am simply depicting a new narrative of women and their subjugation by beautifying the unpleasant, and their internal beauty reveals their external debasement. The women in my work found the courage to break from the unpleasant aspects of the old traditions that are woven in the culture’s mind, developing instead alternate traditions hidden beneath a culture that once was beautiful yet today is just an illusion. They silently communicate a numbed feeling of hypocrisy, with which their culture drowns them. They are articles of attraction and at the same time articles of political delusions.