Critical Response to Artist In Residence Robert Farid Karimi
In all of Robert Farid Karimi’s work, you can see the importance of getting the audience to become more comfortable by creating a sort of gradual change between watching and participating. It gets to the heart of the message centered around identity. In Muñoz’s work they talk about how identity comes weighed down with certain expectations, regardless of a person agreeing or not with them. In order to be a part of that they may have to unwillingly participate in aspects that clash with who they view themselves as. Karimi’s work talks about this in many different ways including being Guatemalan and Iranian as well as participating in Muslim and Catholic traditions. In the event on Wednesday Karimi also talks about play and its importance and in tandem with the Boyd text I think its an interesting comparison. It sets us up to understand rules of the society we live in but it also sets up a lot of toxicity and roles that we also may not want to conform with. Muñoz gave an example of how in certain communities certain roles are heavily gendered and with that in mind I see how play can support those roles in communities.
Back to Karimi, especially in the Farid Mercury/written piece around the same subject, I could feel that internal panic, what the fuck, angry moment. The associations that people burden others with based on what they perceive their identity to be is honestly astounding. I also strongly identified with Karimi’s narrative of someone thinking he was white. His writing is beautiful, poetic, lyrical, funny. I love it.
“In the discussion of race in the country, I am passed up.
Still stuck in black and white paradigm
That sees race as a tug of war of two extremes,
Where other cultures are not allowed to play
And mixed race isn’t even invited to the part.”
I crave the heat of color too.