Ala Ebtekar grew up in the United States. But the stories he heard from his parents and the Persian literature and poetry he read kept him in touch with his Iranian heritage. Over the past decade, his work has focused on drawing parallels between events unfolding today and stories of the past. But his latest collection is about visualising the future. The title, Elsewhen, is a science-fiction term that refers to another place in time and was also the name of a 1941 novel about people who time-travelled in parallel universes. Ebtekar expands its meaning to allude to mentally and spiritually transcending time and space.
"My work so far has created a glimpse of a crossroads where present-day events meet history and mythology. But now I want to think about the future that should emerge from this turmoil. And to create that better future, you need to visualise it first. So this new work is about dreaming of what Utopia could be like," he says.
The artist has used many references to science fiction and astronomical maps in this body of work. But his main inspiration is the revered Persian poet Hafez, who is also regarded as a divine seer. It is an ancient Persian tradition to turn to the Divan-e-Hafez, the collection of his works, for advice. According to custom, people close their eyes and randomly open a page from the book, and they always find the guidance and hope for the future that they seek in the words on that page. People also visit the poet's tomb in Shiraz in search of spiritual solace and an escape from their worldly troubles. Ebtekar has combined the idea of space travel and the power of Hafez's words and aura to offer viewers a portal for discovering an alternate reality and a cosmos of infinite possibilities.
The entire collection is based on an artists' book that Ebtekar is working on, titled Ayandeh Nameh ("book of the future"). The book is inspired by the artist's large collection of ancient Hafez books and Persian poetry manuscripts. "This book of Sufi poetry interleaved with my photographic artworks, is designed to be a space of dreams ... I have tried to recreate visually the sublime and moving experience of reading Hafez's poems and visiting his tomb. My aim was to give the artworks an ethereal, dreamlike quality and create a sense of transcending the here and now," he says.
And that is just the feeling evoked by his mixed-media prints that combine images of the tomb of Hafez and the gardens around it with starry cosmic landscapes. The soft colours, the beauty of the architecture and the starry background transport viewers to a different plane of consciousness.
The title of another set of works is a line from Hafez — The dark midnight, fearful waves, and the tempestuous whirlpool. These are complex, futuristic compositions comprising images of spacecraft, stars, details from Persian architecture and other objects. But embedded in the darkness and turbulence are portals that invite viewers to enter another world.
A third set of works titled Coelestis is inspired by Hafez's books. Here, Ebtekar has actually used pages from a 95-year-old copy of Divan-e-Hafez. He mounted the pages on canvas and used the digital chine-collé technique, drawing and painting to cover them with classic patterns of Iranian carpets.
"These patterns are so much a part of my life. As a child, I played on the carpets at home, and the beautiful borders were the streets and highways on which I drove my toy cars," he says. But to these familiar, comforting icons from the past, Ebtekar has added a glimpse of an unknown, faraway world — images of outer space taken by the Hubble telescope.
Coelestis has been named after a celestial atlas published in 1929, containing maps of the major constellations. Through these artworks, the artist offers a map of the future which is firmly grounded in the past. "It is interesting that some words on the pages get randomly illuminated in the areas with big star clusters. This is similar to randomly picking a page from the Divan-e-Hafez to get answers about the future and perhaps a pointer to the cosmic order of how things should be read," the artist says.
Ebtekar's earlier work was about reconciling nostalgic memories of a generation of Iranians forced into exile with the experiences of his generation. But this work, he says, is about breaking with the endless nostalgia — either about Iran of 2,000 years ago or of the 1970s — and to think about the future instead. "Elsewhen belongs to everybody and I want to invite everyone to expand their perspective and open themselves to the universe to find the space of their dreams," he says.
Jyoti Kalsi is an art enthusiast based in Dubai.
Elsewhen will run at The Third Line until March 8.
