Glenn Harcourt in conversation with multi-media artist Kurosh ValaNejad
Imported books of art are regularly censored in post-revolutionary Iran to cover displays of nudity. Yet Iranian artists have taken this recurring visual theme and repurposed it for personal and political expression. Glenn Harcourt, the author of the recently released book The Artist, The Censor and The Nude speaks about his research into this field and into censorship in the West with Iranian-American artist Kurosh ValaNejad, who first introduced examples of these books to him and to ValaNejad’s erstwhile collaborator, the American feminist painter Pamela Joseph. The Iranian artists, photographers and filmmakers to be discussed reside in-country, in exile, and in one case, in limbo while his immigration status is held up by new US laws.
– Roya Hakakian, founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center and author of Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran
Thoughtful and rigorous, the book provides an excellent survey of contemporary censorship.