Mona Bozorgi was born and raised in Iran. She received her BA in Photography from the Art and Architecture University of Tehran in Iran, and her MFA in Photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Bozorgi utilizes photography to represent the complexities of culture, society, and personal reflection. Her studio practice and research are focused on issues of female repression and representation. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She is currently working toward her Ph.D. in Fine Arts at Texas Tech University.
Objet Fatale
In the current global society, women are too frequently treated like objects at the expense of their well-being and their human rights. As an Iranian woman who has experienced objectification in many ways – by country, society, and religion – a woman’s freedom is my central concern as an artist. My subjugated role in society has influenced me to consider censorship, isolation, and the reductive stereotyping that is the inevitable result of objectification.
Photography– as a medium with the power to both repeat and reject objectification – inherently turns people into objects to be beheld. In Objet Fatale, I combine images of women and objects that morph, becoming hybrid objects for consumption. It shows that women’s social conformism has placed women in closer relationship to commercial objects and the photographic image. Through deliberate, photo-sculptural visual strategies, I reveal the possibility to change (or at least interrogate) the epidemic formula of narrowly objectifying representations of female identity. By investigating the relations between the representation of the female body and photography, I attempt to define photography as a multilayered cultural carrier by disrupting the photographic illusion and restoring subject-hood through emphasis on materiality.
To view more of Mona’s work please visit her website.