Identity-Episode Three

I lived in Tehran and got used to being a Hamadani-Tehrani Iranian. Through a succession of events, I came to know an artist named Mehdi Ahanchi. Ahanchi creates impressive works of art by combining copper and cold ceramic, covering the entire creation with polyester glaze. He is considered a unique sculpture artist and his works are displayed in contemporary arts museums and collections (http://www.opus125.org/mocia/ ). To a few lucky people, too, he sells his artwork for handsome prices. We bought a collection of Ahanchi works for our home in Tehran. Among the pieces we owned was a flat, framed sculpture of a man sitting in his pottery “studio” in Hamadan’s Lalehjin village. Lalehjin is a village just outside Hamadan, boasting the title of pottery capital of Iran, sending millions of primarily blue, and occasionally different colored hand-made bowls, plates and artifacts into the Iranian market. I have visited Lalehjin many times and also have a modest collection of its pottery, which though is not very durable because it chips and breaks easily, is a powerful symbol of a place I am now dutifully and lovingly calling my province. When under certain circumstances I left that home in 2006, leaving all in and about the home behind, there was only one thing I regretted leaving behind—the Ahanchi work which depicted the old man in Lalehjin, somehow a piece of my newly-developed and cherished identity.

(To be continued....)

Photo: Mehdi Ahanchi's "Two Women," http://www.geocities.com/cccaah/previous_exhibition.htm