Coffee shop Ladies 2004-2005

An Interactive program in 7 pages accompanied by fifteen 30x40cm photos + A mouse & a head phone that allows user/ visitors to explore what's behind the hidden faces of coffee shop Ladies . The program was presented for the first time in amirali's solo exhibition in cafe aks as a part of Concealed & exposed [coffee shop series] exhibition in Sep 2005,in Cafe Aks then in Oct 2005 was shown as a part of A human being, Different ways of looking at Baran Art Gallery Tehran.

Created by Amirali Ghasemi
Programmed by Salman Khoshro
Sound Recording by Raha Faridi

Photo/video by amirali Ghasemi
Poster By Iman Raad


Photos
installation in Cafe Aks 
Coffee shop Ladies Mulitimedia
 
 
   
Coffeeshop Ladies
Amirali Ghasemi's Coffeeshop Ladies series are documentary photos taken from Tehran's most popular cafés (or 'coffeeshops' as they are called in Iran).
Coffee shops in Iran are the symbol of social freedom to some degree, due to the absence of a proper public space. It's a place where both the splendidly motivated young and the intelligentsia gather, and a meeting place for  journalists as well. The faces of young ladies in these photos are hidden by blank-outs. By reducing the level of information that each photo offers to the visitors, the artist has tried to prevent the Media from easily misusing, manipulating or interrupting the image on a mass global scale. But the connection isn't lost completely as visitors (users) are let to explore an interactive program based on the photos to know more about these ladies by clicking & listening.

Due to the fog which covers the complex contexts of many regions of world (for example, the controversial neverending stories of the Middle East) which is caused by the lack of realistic communication and by over-exaggerating violent images which are shown in the media, every piece of art like every other IMAGE are being cruelly considered & used as INFORMATION to shed light on the dark sides. As a double-blade every piece of information can be used in both positive and negative ways, Ghasemi himself realizes this experiment by sharing these images with a larger group of audience over the internet & by examining the effect of it of the different contexts, and describes it as a uncertain feeling between failure and success because despite the unsuccessful attempt of trying to protect the images by erasing some parts of information beside adding some other information (the text & the multimedia), still they are being read differently through wrong given political keywords like censorship, women's rights, scarf, Hijab & Islam.