About Rebel, Rebel (Googoosh), 2019 and Cowgirl (Googoosh), 2018 Is based on a photograph from mid 1970’s of one of the top Persian iconic actor/singer Googoosh. She is Iran’s most...
About Rebel, Rebel (Googoosh), 2019 and Cowgirl (Googoosh), 2018
Is based on a photograph from mid 1970’s of one of the top Persian iconic actor/singer Googoosh. She is Iran’s most popular and enduring entertainers.
Her father put her on stage at the age of three and from then on she became a professional paid performer. During the 1970s, Googoosh began a meteoric rise, known for her flamboyant outfits and fashion sense, Googoosh wowed her pop culture hungry fans in Iran and abroad with her trademark hairdos and hip-elegant style, she was the fashion/pop icon equivalent to Madonna of her time for Iranian women with her changing fashion sense, blending looks from Western and Eastern styles. Her music ranged from upbeat 1960s and 1970s pop, given a traditional-tinged edge, to declamatory, emotional ballads dealing with love and loss, which at times edged towards chanson and Édith Piaf She starred in over 25 movies, one of which was to be the most commercially successful Iranian motion picture of all time.
Here she is seen as the girl with attitude, the cowgirl who tames the bull and rides the horse, showing her playful side, surrounded by cactus which as a phallic plant, symbolic of the patriarchal society that surrounded her. Some of the cacti have needles and some have flowers that reflects that not all of these male companions were aggressive and some she claims helped her rise to stardom. The image of her as a cowgirl also addresses the obsession of most young Iranians with the US and its culture, a relationship which to this day is a complex mixture of love-hate feeling which has its roots in the 1953 coup d’état orchestrated by the CIA and Britain under project TPAJAX, where the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh was replaced by the Shah of Iran.
