Lot 579: Farhad Ahrarnia , Iranian B. 1971 Stitched digital colour prints on cotton aida mounted in plexiglass

signed, titled, numbered 4/7 and dated 2002-2003 on the reverse digital colour prints on cotton aida mounted in plexiglass

measurements note each: 29 by 24cm.; 11 1/2 by 9 1/2 in.

This work is number 4 from a series of 7, plus 1 artist's proof.
Farhad Ahrarnia's portraits of youths from the Bradford riots were taken from closed-circuit television surveillance of the event. The heavily pixellated appearance of these young men is a tool utilised by the artist to indicate how removed we are as observers, the faces of these young men are as unclear to us as their motives and the reality of the event. It is a reference to our inability to grasp something so outside our own experience, and comments on the swift denunciation of these men by the press and the police. According to Ahrarnia, the embroidery is a reference to the cotton mills of the Victorian midlands and the very English history of Bradford and its surrounding area, the bright colours of the cotton silk threads on the other hand allude to the exotic background of the local immigrants, pointing to the unique weave of Bradford's social structure. The very title of the work, 'Stitched', has its own associations. The clever play on words conjures up such diverse images as beauty and femininity, fear, prejudice and apprehension. The nature of the work is such that the characters in the Bradford riots become both more and less human, their embroidered and pixellated faces taking on a distance, as though through a screen that simultaneously softens and de-demonises them. 'Stitched' is a fascinating commentary on prejudice, violence and the political temperature on a local and international scale.