About The Love Addict (2019) It’s based on the double portrait of the Persian pop idol and actor Googoosh, who was born in 1950 in Tehran. She lost her mother...
It’s based on the double portrait of the Persian pop idol and actor Googoosh, who was born in 1950 in Tehran. She lost her mother whenshe was an infant and moved with her entertainer and comedian father to Tehran where he encouraged her to sing in bars and cafés from the age of 5. In 1958, Googoosh was discovered as a unique talent with an eclectic style in modern Iranian music and became a pop culture icon among the Iranian youth. Since then she has become one of the best international and beloved female artist in the Middle East with popular songs like “Talagh (meaning divorce)” she has recently become a hit with Western pop artists like Beyoncé and Kanye. Googoosh is said to have been a victim of underworld organizations who controlled cabarets and bars in Tehran of the 1960’s and with their help was propelled into the mainstream Iranian pre-revolutionary cinema, however, her acting career ended with the 1979 revolution in Iran. In 2000 after 21 years of silence she travelled to America via Canada and became a pop star in exile singing for fellow Iranian émigrés.
Her songs are very poetic and celebrate or lament love. After three short marriages and her futile endeavour for enduring love her songs have become autobiographical and real and the painting’s title reflects her biography.
In this painting she sits in front of a portrait of herself wearing an almost Tudor style luxurious jacket lined with fur and studded with pearls and gold threads which reflects her rich and diverse fashion sensibility but also echoes her acting career. Her skin tone is more flesh colour in this portrait within a portrait contrasting with her grey skin tone in the full sitting figure suggestive of the colour versus black and white photography, this juxtaposition questions the position of reality. The sitting figure oozes with confidence and shows a woman who knows her mind and knows how to get her way despite having to negotiate a male dominated and politically divided world of pre-revolutionary Iran.
The floor design is inspired by Piero della Francesca in the perspectival composition and grounded in an Islamic geometric star pattern. Islamic geometric patterns symbolise the vastness of universe and the infinity of God, Googoosh sitting central in a 1970’s round chair that mirrors the circular format of the floor becomes the central focus as the true Star. The wallpaper pattern graphically mimics flames licking the walls behind her, the meaning of which is left to the viewer to unpack.
Finally, the painting support as calf vellum signifies the calf that is the sacrificial animal in the major monotheistic religions and symbolises the sacrifice of the individual.
