And How Miserable Is the Home of Evil

"Islam naturally stands against the conspiracy between liberal democracies to dominate the world." At the time of writing, this is the kind of unappealing hyperbole that Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, spouts in videos that can be downloaded in high definition from his official website. It’s a goldmine for anybody who wishes to misappropriate these online archives to corrupt their meaning. This is the project undertaken by Saleh Kashefi, an Iranian visual artist who has taken refuge in Switzerland. With a desire to “play his part” in the revolt under way in his native country, he decides to attack the man "who has influenced every second of [his] life". By playing him at his own game, on the field of his public image. With And How Miserable is the Home of Evil, Kashefi recounts the fall of a dictator in the style of a political drama, as if he were there to record the moment (like Peter Watkins’ reporters documenting the events of La Commune), by recreating a soundtrack that assigns troubling emotions to the Leader, cowering on his throne, awaiting his end, while the streets fill with whispers.

Emmanuel Chicon