Moustachioed Women and Rhinoplastic Girls, 2022
This series can be seen to meet at a crossroads in time. The moustachioed women are a nod to photographer Antoin Sevruguin’s 19th-century portraits. Sevruguin’s work offered a rare glimpse into the private lives of women within secluded spaces. Bamzar’s recreates this intimate insight through her veiled rhinoplastic girls, illustrating the coercive control lurking behind patriarchal beauty standards and a theocratic government. Her portraits showcase incongruous juxtapositions of tradition and modernity through the use of religious symbolism, cultural foods and contemporary fashion.
Her works capture beauty at its most fickle. It highlights the perpetuity of the conversation surrounding bodily autonomy in which Iranian women often find themselves being decentred. Through these portraits, Bamzar reclaims the narrative by exploring their nuanced experiences through a feminist lens.
