Wild at Heart (Portrait of Pouran Shapoori), 2019. “Farhdokht Abbasi Taghany” was born on 4th February 1934, to a wealthy but tremendously conservative Islamic family in Iran. Since her childhood...
Wild at Heart (Portrait of Pouran Shapoori), 2019.
“Farhdokht Abbasi Taghany” was born on 4th February 1934, to a wealthy but tremendously conservative Islamic family in Iran. Since her childhood she dreamed of being a singer, but this was resisted by her family, they had planned a life for her with an arranged marriage, children and within a restricted code of conduct. Their decision forced her to run away from home and find her own way to Tehran. She stayed with distant relatives and attended the Asadi high School and later completed a music school in Tehran. Her career in music started almost straight away on Radio Tehran in early 50’s and she rose to fame under the name “anonymous lady” reflecting her fear of the retribution from her family. Eventually she appeared on the national TV but by then she was already a household name, but her quest to become a singer meant that she never saw her family again. She married her first husband, Abbas Shapoori, a violinist and composer, he encouraged her to sing and wrote many songs for her. She adopted his surname (in Iran married women traditionally hold on to their maiden name) and with the assumed name Pouran or Pooran, she became one of the most popular classic and pop singer/ actors of the pre-revolutionary Iran. In her career she produced over 32 hit songs and 5 movies. In her performances she would sing but never danced, possibly due to the deep-set family values she sang with minimum body movement. In her film roles she always played a singing, chaste heroine who would end up doing right by her family and the hero.
After separation from her first husband, she married Habib Roshanzadeh (TV sports commentator) that resulted in two children, but this also ended in divorce.
During the Iranian revolution in Feb 1979, Pouran was performing in the US so she remained in the US. In 1990, she returned to Iran to see her grandchildren but died from complications from cancer, she is buried in Karaj, Tehran. Not much is known about her life as she was an extremely private person.
The title of the painting reflects on a woman who will follow her own path, adventurous and uninhibited. This painting presents Pouran at the height of her fame sitting on a chair, with the foliage that sprouts directly from the pattern on her dress. The pattern weaves and grows becoming a canopy of foliage where two birds sit on the branches, the birds symbolise her as a singer.
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