{"id":152,"date":"2009-09-07T18:08:11","date_gmt":"2009-09-07T18:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.parkingallery.com\/?p=152"},"modified":"2026-08-17T16:08:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T16:08:32","slug":"the-dada-disgust-a-medical-profile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.parkingallery.org\/?p=152","title":{"rendered":"The Dada Disgust: A Medical Profile*"},"content":{"rendered":"

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As Doctor Prescribed<\/strong> by Amirali Ghasemi and Hamed Sahihi | 2009 |\r\nVocals: Nazli Bodaghi | Sound recording: Soheil Peyghambari |\r\nRecorded at Kargadan Studio | Music by: Martin Shamounpour<\/pre>\n
The Dada Disgust: A  Medical Profile*<\/strong>
\nBavand  Behpoor
\n27 July  2009<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2026[C]ruel  with myself\u2026 .\u2019
\n\u2014Antonin  Artaud<\/p>\n
\u2018The exhibition is disgusting\u2019, visitors would say. \u2018And it is probably the most powerful thing he has ever done,\u2019 they would add. [Of course, he hadn\u2019t done it. It had been done to him, or, in certain cases, he had himself exposed to it.] To make it short: there was no doubt that Amir Ali Ghasemi\u2019s exhibition at Azad Art Gallery was powerfully disgusting.
\nAs a visitor, I personally take no pleasure in being disgusted. Generally, what I expect from artistic encounter is not so much about \u2018being moved\u2019, rather about seeing a clever \u2018move\u2019 on behalf of the artist. There would have been little sense, and probably even less art, in \u2018AmirAli\u2019s Medical Profile\u2019 if it was less clever than moving.
\nThe exhibition, in most part, simply documents the medical history of the artist in an objective manner. This is done with a scientific accuracy endowing the work with a solemn bitterness. No matter how much self-pity is intermingled, the works raging from videos to photographs, to narrative texts and interactive installations all testify to an \u2018objective\u2019 and \u2018undeniable\u2019 agony experienced through the processes they portray. They range from \u2018facial irritations caused by being exposed to sever air pollution and floating dust\u2019 to a picture of a broken left tumb to a Salbutamol spray to \u2018nine metal objects in platinum including one main part with nine holes and eight screws installed on the right leg\u2019s bone during 1993-4\u2019 to \u2018wounds and irritations on the left art caused by reactions to smoking and consuming hot potato chips, 16 July 2009\u2019 and the like. The presentation of the works is sincere but careful and well thought of. The interactive shelves filled with objects considered irritating or disgusting to the artist, do not qualify for a kind \u2018presentation\u2019, they \u2018perform\u2019.
\nAs a kind of self-portraiture and at least on the surface, the work is far from being narcissist. The artist happily engages in a brutal destruction of a social image we normally expect to be \u2018healthy\u2019, \u2018lively\u2019 and \u2018coherent\u2019. But fortunately, this is not what the work is all about: it does not try to seek compassion as documentary or journalistic photography might do: there is nothing to be done about what is portrayed. There is nobody to blame but life. All that is gathered in this one person could have happened separately to anyone of us. And it actually has. It is not a call for help: in certain cases, the artist has voluntarily exposed himself to a risk, turning photographs into documents of performances, which, instead of probing the limits of physical tolerance, portray the excessive vulnerability of \u2018this\u2019 single body.
\nWhile nothing is fictional here, the narrative texts documenting the events are extremely performative.\u00a0 The artist considers them not only a part of the exhibition, but rather an end to it, \u2018I wanted to write them, so I made up this exhibition.\u2019 While attempting in their way of writing to portray the harshness of a situation, they carefully limit themselves to the medical history they narrate. They contend themselves in saying, \u2018it happened and it was so bad\u2019 but all the same, they convey there is something very inhumane about this simple and apparently neutral way of saying it. It is as if the artist\/author is addressing a coroner at a court session where every bit of human attention is exchanged with bits of evidence.
\nAll this would have not been so meaningful if presented in a different location and to a different audience: it would have not been the same exhibition outside Tehran and Azad Art Gallery, an art gallery famous for its courageous management which dares to host most politically charged contemporary art exhibitions of today\u2019s Iranian art scene. It is in this troubled city with a boiling political atmosphere that the true meaning of the exhibition unfolds: it is not a work of someone like Paul McCarthy, a master of disgust, humiliating the healthy-wealthy modern subject of a consumerist capitalist society, quite the contrary, it is an exposition of sheer vulnerability of a human body that only finds the freedom of criticizing infliction of pain upon bodies when it is presented in a greater generality. Thus, it is not an exhibition only about \u2018now\u2019 and \u2018here\u2019: it is about thirty years of history that the artist and his generation have experienced which has left them alone with a sort of \u2018dada disgust\u2019. It is about a \u2018wrong life that cannot be lived correctly\u2019, as Adorno would have had it, which we tried to live.
\nSo there it is, a powerfully disgusting exhibition nurturing on an urge probably located at the intersection of Artaud and Rimbaud: trying to be cruel to one\u2019s self in portraying himself while at the same time implicity stating that \u2018I is the Other\u2019.
\n* \u2018Amir Ali\u2019s Medical Profile\u2019 was held at Azad Art Gallery, Tehran, from 24th till 29th July 2009. Further info and images of the work can be found at www.azadartgalery.com<\/a> and the artist\u2019s personal website: 
\nhttp:\/\/www.amiralighasemi.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As Doctor Prescribed by Amirali Ghasemi and Hamed Sahihi | 2009 | Vocals: Nazli Bodaghi | Sound recording: Soheil Peyghambari | Recorded at Kargadan Studio | Music by: Martin Shamounpour The Dada Disgust: A Medical Profile* Bavand Behpoor 27 July 2009 \u2018\u2026[C]ruel with myself\u2026 .\u2019 \u2014Antonin Artaud \u2018The exhibition is disgusting\u2019, visitors would say. \u2018And … Continue reading The Dada Disgust: A Medical Profile*<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,15],"tags":[8,24],"class_list":["post-152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes","category-prg","category-video","tag-exhibitions","tag-notes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.parkingallery.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.parkingallery.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.parkingallery.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.parkingallery.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.parkingallery.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.parkingallery.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.parkingallery.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.parkingallery.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.parkingallery.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}