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Neguin Yavari

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Robert Hillenbrand, a prominent historian of Islamic art has said this about her work:

Jila Peacock, then, like a host of Islamic scribes before her, illustrates in our own day the untiring virtuosity of those who use the Arabic and Persian script as their preferred form of visual expression. Thanks to her choice of Hafez as a text, her innovative use of nasta‘liq, her sensitive handling of script as mass, her imaginative bestiary and her radical approach to colour, she has revealed new riches in this traditional genre.¹

And the famed art critic Sister Wendy Beckett concurred:

It seems to me that Peacock’s infinitely skillful calligraphy, as she spells out the lyrics of this mystic poet [Hafez], has its rise in the same silence and prayer that are essential for the creation of an icon. It is the attitude that makes a work religiously iconic, not the actual religion, though of course the incarnation of Christ, the bodily form taken by the divine, is the validation of the icon painters’ reverent attempts to make God visible, to unite the praying heart with what is picture. Peacock does something of the same, I think. Hafez yearns toward his god, and these word-forms are to his glory.²

I sat with Jila Peacock³ this past October to learn about her work.

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NY: I have read what people have said about your work. I will ask you my questions and then perhaps at the end I could offer my own reaction to your work, as it parts company with what others have said about it. Robert Hillenbrand is a world-renowned historian of Islamic art, so I shall begin with him. He places your work in a long tradition of Islamic art. Do you see your work as pertaining to a tradition?

JP: No, I remember as a child, being fascinated with pictures, in fact faces, made up of animals in a store on Chahar Rah-i Eslambol⁴ in Tehran. You’ve seen those. I loved the idea of shapes in other shapes, but I also knew about the figural writing tradition in Iran, it was common knowledge really. Particularly using a horse, which is an ‘Alid icon. I actually used this horse ten years before I started thinking of it in terms of calligraphy, I used the shape of the horse and did abstract shapes with it and I made a painting of it. I did that in 1992, a full eight years before I started thinking of doing it in a shape using writing. I also found a greetings card in a bookshop in London done by an Arab artist, and he had made a shape of a tree using rough, childlike writing. I thought well if he can use childlike writing then why don’t I have a go. My writing is unsophisticated, I learned it as a child at school in Tehran. But of course, I knew how things should look. My first drawing was of a parrot, using the fourth poem in the Divan-e Hafez, but my writing did not work, it was too rough. I then worked on it to develop the style. I’ve now had some calligraphy lessons with an Iranian teacher in London on Zoom. I knew he would say this is not good enough; it takes 25 years of practicing every day to become a true calligrapher, – like becoming a concert pianist. I never call myself a calligrapher, I am a painter who uses calligraphy. I don’t see myself in that tradition, but perhaps Professor Hillenbrand saw it that way.

I remember I went to a talk of his and then I went on a course on the history of Persian painting that he ran at Edinburgh University, By the end of the three months long course, I had made an image of the horse from a poem by Hafez and I took it  to him and I said, “I’d like to give you this.” He looked at it and said, “Who did this?” I said, “Actually I did this.” He said, “What?” It was amazing to see the surprise on his face. The other wonderful moment was when four years later I went to him with the film and asked if we could watch it together. I went to his house which is full of books and we sat in a corner and watched the film. He said, “This film could be shown over 24 hours and it would still be interesting.” It’s only five minutes, but because each frame is so good—that’s what he said. It was a huge compliment and a lovely thing to say.

NY: I completely agree with him—just like the calligraphy, it is so unassuming that it takes you even more by surprise.

JP: I made that film with a wonderful filmmaker David Anderson, who sadly died four years ago, such a tragedy. There was also a young Belgian animation artist, Florian Ghibert, a computer genius, who developed all the writing as animation. We were trying to find someone, and David spent a huge amount of the money from the award we got from Channel4 to find the right person.  Finally, his daughter asked if the boyfriend of a friend of hers could have a go. David being openminded agreed. Florian came up with a fish, a little black and white fish just swimming round like that and turning back on itself. We both looked at this amazed and said this is the one we are going with! He and I would still like to make more of the animation, but it is so difficult to get funding and without David I probably will not be able to make another film.

NY: The Little Black Fish is a famous iconic Iranian short story by a romantic idealist, a young and leftist novelist Samad Behrangi (d. 1968), idolized by the public in the 1970s. The little black fish is the one that stands out and doesn’t toe the line like the rest of the school.⁵

The author died by drowning and there were rumors that the Shah’s secret service SAVAK was involved in his death. It was popular among those who took part in the revolution of 1979. It works well with your fish going and coming and turning back on itself.

JP: That sounds nice, I have to say. I shall take a look.

NY: Where is Iran to you? How do you feel it? Do you associate yourself with the news on Iran? You were eleven when you left, is that right?

JP: I was born and had my childhood in Iran. When you’re 11 in Iran — I’m sure it’s the same now — you’re an adult, really. I compare myself with my sister who was only three when we left Iran and doesn’t  speak Farsi. She actually looks much more Iranian than I do, I look much more like my mother who was English.

I went to my first school in Iran. I remember in the mornings we used to sing before going to class “Shahanshah ma zendeh bada” and all that.⁶ But in the end it wasn’t about the Shah, but about mihan (homeland). I remember feeling that as a little girl.

We left Iran by bus in the summer of 1959. I don’t know why my parents decided to do that but it was a fantastic journey, and I remember every moment of those two weeks. We took the bus to Erzurum and then the plane to Istanbul; from Istanbul we took the trans-European Oriental Express to Germany, there my father bought a car and we drove the rest of the way to England. It was a wonderful, epic, journey… But I remember standing at the Bazargan border crossing leaving Iran,(at Iran’s border with Turkey), and looking back at the hills and the mountains and the desert disappearing into the background, and thinking “this is my country.” I was a romantic child, and I identified with Iran very much when I was young. It was ten years before I returned, in 1970 when I was a medical student.

NY: Did you speak Persian at home?

JP: My mother was English so we never spoke Persian at home, which is the reason my sister doesn’t speak it. My first language was English, but I learnt Farsi with my cousins and went to school, so my first written language was Farsi.

After I left Iran, I stayed several summers with my Iranian aunty in Paris, and my Farsi would come back. I have a good accent, and I can read and write in Farsi, but my vocabulary is weak. I have to use a dictionary.

I always say if you want to translate the poetry of a nation you have to know its nursery rhymes. I’m very Iranian I could say, in that I remember all the nursery rhymes, yeki bud yeki nabud (once upon a time), and all those lovely kalaghs (crows).⁷ Nursery rhymes are such an important basis of the poetic sounds of a language. And that is what I do have, I guess.

NY: In a way, my childhood was an exact reversal of yours. Both my parents are Iranian, but I went to an international school run by Americans, so my first reading and writing language was English, although we spoke Persian at home.

JP: You know, I just think my parents, they were very sweet, there was a certain naivete about them that is lovely. There wasn’t an American school in the 1950s, and not even an English school, there was only the French school, Jeanne d’Arc.⁸ They sent me to a kindergarten full of nuns. I told my mother I didn’t want to go there, I didn’t like the nuns and I didn’t want to learn another language, so they sent me instead to our local school, the Firuzkuhi School,⁹ right off Naderi Street, around the corner from our house, so I went to school with all the local children.

In 2017 I went back to Tehran to show a piece at an exhibition curated by my cousin, Faryar Javaherian at the Golestan palace. I told my cousin that I wanted to see if I could find the building where my school was. I went with her secretary to what used to be called Seh Rah Shah,¹⁰ of course not now called Seh Rah Shah, and I saw this funny little street. I had a peak, and there was my school, the same old building with the red bricks, steps going up and the metal doors. It was right around the beginning of the school year, and people were going in and out. I wandered in and stood there like a ghost. A very nice lady came and asked me if she could help, “Khanom befarmayid, che kar darid (Madam, how may I help you)?” I said: “I was here you know, at school here.” And she said, “No khanom, you must be mistaken, this is a boy’s school.” I laughed and said, “No khanom, this didn’t used to be a boy’s school; the boy’s school was next door!” That was over 60 years ago I said to her, and she just looked at me with eyes all round and said, “Khahesh mikonam, befarmayid (Please come in).”

I walked around the school, I went up the stairs, where I remember falling and hitting my head. I went into the courtyard, which of course seemed much smaller, where we used to stand and sing the national anthem every morning, and gazed at the same blue tiled calligraphy, I went up to my old classroom, the desks had changed, of course  but the room itself was exactly as I remembered it. I took a photograph of myself there, it was so extraordinary.

It was like going back into a dream. Iran is in some ways like a previous existence, as though I had completed a different life there?  Iran is sort of like Jupiter for me, somewhere I was at some stage in a previous life, but very real. And it was extraordinary going back and seeing my old school.

NY: When I see your work, Persian art does not come to mind. Your work conjures up the image of an artist choosing deliberately to bring two shapes together, not combining two traditions.

JP: I think you’re right. In terms of traditions, I wasn’t in a fixed tradition, it wasn’t as though there were rules that I was breaking. I kept thinking to myself why didn’t anybody else think about putting Hafez (d. 1390) into shape forms? The poems are full of animals, but nobody thought of putting them into shape forms, although that is within the history of the calligraphy. It may be because there are rules, and you don’t even think about breaking them. But because I never had that rule, I could think outside the box, to use a boring metaphor. I don’t know, that’s what I think.

Hoopoe

Hoopoe of the east wind
To Sheba I shall send you,
Take heed from where to where
I shall send you

Whispering in the breeze,
Each dawn and dusk,
Convoys of sweet invocations
I shall send you

Bring me the cup,
For my inner voice is calling,
Endure this grief, then the balm
I shall send you

(Hafez of Shiraz. (d. 1390)
Trans. Jila Peacock

NY: The loudest message of your art is individualism.

JP: Well I do have so many different ideas in my head, and so many things that I put together. Some people think it is because of my background in medicine. But it has nothing to do with being a doctor. My name is Pezeshgi, you know that? My family were all from Mashhad, and they were all doctors. My father was a doctor as was my uncle, my sister is a doctor. I had to be a doctor because my name is Pezeshgi! Some people look at my work and say: “She does so many different things. We didn’t understand, we can’t cope with all these different things.” I don’t care, I do what I do, and I always have done. Individualism is one way perhaps of describing it. I’m not following somebody, although there are many artists whom I absolutely enjoy and I am inspired by. There is a huge amount of Matisse that I am inspired by, as you can see, but then Matisse was inspired by Persian art. I am inspired by Byzantine paintings and icons, early Sienese painting, the wonderful Italian annunciation paintings full of angels—but angels are also totally Iranian. I seem to go back to some sort of an archetype in my head, which seems very natural to me. All these images feel like a huge soup in my head that come up in different ways.

NY: The next big question about your work is religion. I love Sister Wendy, and she loved your work.¹¹ She talks about icons: “It seems to me that Peacock’s infinitely skillful calligraphy, as she spells out the lyrics of this mystic poet [Hafez], has its rise in the same silence and prayer that are essential for the creation of an icon.”

JP:  (laughs) I’m not laughing because it’s funny, but because I had forgotten she had said that—I don’t like reading about myself.

She first saw my work back in the 1980s, when she came to one of the very first shows  I had in London of my paintings in 1989. There were all these mother and child images, and angels. It was when I had just come out of art school — I went to St Martin’s school of Art after medical school, you see—and I was already in my thirties. She was interested in my work way before she knew I was Iranian, and way before I produced the Hafez stuff. When she saw the Hafez stuff she got very excited. I remember when Word into Art had just been published,¹² and I gave a talk at the opening of my show at the British Museum in their wonderful auditorium. I’ll never forget that she arrived late, and stood dramatically at the top of the stairs, in full regalia. Nuns don’t wear that stuff now. She looked like the bad fairy out to scare everyone.  She arrived at the top of the stairs and I had to go and ask a friend of mine to bring her down the stairs, as she couldn’t raise her head properly. She was in her eighties. She was so theatrical and wonderful, and I remember her saying, then, “Jila, this is the apotheosis, isn’t it?”

NY: That’s exactly what she has written. She sees Jesus in your calligraphy, and the incarnation of Christ, which she compares with the efforts of an icon painter to make God visible: “Peacock does something of the same, I think. Hafez yearns toward his god, and these word-forms are to his glory.”

JP: I try not to read these things, but what a wonderful thing to say.

I thought you were going to ask me about my religion. My mother was Christian, but she became less religious throughout her life. My father was Muslim, and he became more religious as he grew older. Neither of them ever talked about religion to me. When people ask I say sometimes I am a ‘’Muslim Christian, and sometimes I am a ‘Christian Muslim’, perhaps those are the dangerous ones?

NY: Of course, those are the dangerous ones.

JP: I remember I had a show at the University of St Andrews.¹³ It was in celebration of a particular composer, Jonathan Harvey (d. 2012). I painted these huge images, of an angel and of Mary, one on each side of the chapel, I had them as hangings. It was a Christmas celebration and the Rector who ran the university chapel was Protestant. I remember thinking he was uncomfortable. Anyway, the Director of Music for the university was with me, so he allowed it.

It doesn’t matter—in the end, you have to believe, you cannot not believe in something greater than this world. God help us if we can’t believe in something greater than this world. Especially in the current state of political affairs, you’d have to shoot yourself if you didn’t believe in something.

NY: Owning up to belief in something greater than this world is not in vogue these days.

JP: Yes, I know. My concept of god-head is a very Muslim one, I think, which is much more abstract. Perhaps this makes me very Shi‘a in that I believe in Christ being an extraordinary figure, but the idea of Christ being a human god is an anathema, very Greco-Roman. We just came back from Greece, and I often think  Christians don’t realize so much of their belief is from the Greek and the Romans traditions.

I remember being taught in my Iranian school, “Qul hu Allah ahad (Say, ‘He is God the One’).”¹⁴ I remember also my last year of primary school in England, at the assembly I held up my hands in front of my face rather than putting my palms together. I remember the girls in class whispering about the new girl who worships in a strange way.

NY: It’s interesting that you associate the notion of an abstract God with Shi‘ism, whereas in the Islamic tradition itself it is Jesus that is frequently associated with mystical love for the divine.

JP: Yes, ruh Allah (the soul of god).

NY: You have a practical approach to abstract and conceptual matters.

JP: Yes, I can’t say it is all set in stone, I hope I shall always stay openminded about things although I find the concept of atheism foolish.

NY: Insisting that God doesn’t exist?

JP: In a strange sort of way, it is amusing, it is laughable.

NY: Do you think of yourself as a woman artist?

JP: I certainly think of myself as a woman, though not particularly as a woman artist. I do remember as a young child thinking it very unfair that as a girl I couldn’t aspire to certain things. But I had a cousin in Iran who became junior minister of education, she was very bright. I was imbued with the idea that as a woman you couldn’t do half as well as men. It took coming to Europe to open my eyes. It wasn’t until my second year in grammar school that I realized boys and girls take the same O level and A level exams! I had assumed that boys being ‘so much brighter,’ took a different exam. I was SO embarrassed when I realized this was not true and that I was subconsciously ingrained with the fact that I was a second-class person for being a woman!

I certainly follow women’s issues—I have two daughters and I am always interested in what they are doing. And I am interested in women’s literature, so yes, I do think of myself very much as a woman.

NY: Again, in a very individualistic practical way you are aware of yourself as a woman. Many women artists from a Muslim background have an oppositional stance to religion which they blame for the injustices and inequities.

JP: But perhaps it is male dominance in religions everywhere that is the problem? Do you know the works of Shirazeh Houshiary?¹⁵ She has always worked outside Iran. She is a sculptor, and writes Shi‘i verses on big slabs of marble, but her work is quite restrained, much less sensuous than Shirin Neshat’s work.¹⁶ There is a gentleness in Neshat’s work.

NY: Yes, Neshat’s work is gentle and bold.

JP: Gentle and bold sounds good.

NY: And your work with shadows?

JP: Lockdown was wonderful for me. I didn’t see anyone for weeks — except my husband, who has always been so supportive of my work. We were at medical school together. It was wonderful to have the time to stop and think. I produced all these pieces from shadows on photographs of  images I took looking down from our apartment in Glasgow of people walking along the river Clyde during the first lockdown. It was later that I developed them into silhouettes that I filled in with Persian colors. I had seen the Shahnameh folios in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Sheila Canby when I was there about 4 or 5 years ago. Since the light  and colors of my Tehran childhood, these images have been very important for me.

NY: Thank you.

Notes

1. Robert Hillenbrand, “Figural Calligraphy in the Muslim World,” in Jila Peacock, Ten Poems from Hafez (London: Sylph Editions, 2006); also available at http://www.jilapeacock.co.uk/works/ten-poems-from-hafez/essay/. ↑
2. Sister Wendy Beckett, “The Intoxicating Eye: On Looking at Jila Peacock’s Ten Poems from Hafez,” Image 51 (n.d.); https://imagejournal.org/article/the-intoxicating-eye/. ↑
3. For more on the artist, visit her website: http://www.jilapeacock.co.uk/. ↑
4. Eslambol (Istanbul) Square in Tehran is located at the heart of the old city at the intersection of Jumhuri (former Shah) and Ferdowsi avenues, in close proximity to the British and Russian embassies, and the Treasury of National Jewels, affiliated with the Central Bank. ↑
5. Samad Behrangi’s Mahī-i siyāh-i kūchūlū, translated as Samad Behrangi, The Little Black Fish and Other Modern Persian Stories, tr. M. and E. Hooglund (Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1976); on Behrangi’s life and legacy see Michael C. Hillmann, “Behrangī, Ṣamad,” Encyclopaedia Iranica Online, https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-iranica-online/behrangi-samad-COM_6849. ↑
6. Shahanshah ma zendeh bada (long live our king of kings), the opening words to Iran’s national anthem from 1933 until the Islamic revolution of 1979 when the monarchy was abolished. ↑
7. Yekī būd yekī nabūd is the conventional opening line of Persian stories, equivalent to “once upon a time;” Yek kalāgh chehel kalāgh is an old children’s fable that tells the story of the unintended consequences of making seemingly innocuous exaggerations; preserved in ‘Ali Akbar Dehkhudā, Amthāl wa ḥakam, 4 vols  (Tehran: Matba‘a Majlis, 1931); one recently published adaptation is Fereyden Urujlu and Salim Salehi, Yek kalāgh, chehel kalāgh (Tehran: Mu’assassah Farhangi Hunari Tahir, 2007). ↑
8. For the history of French schools in Iran, see Djavad Hadidi, “FRANCE xv. FRENCH SCHOOLS IN PERSIA,” Encyclopaedia Iranica Online; https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-iranica-online/france-COM_10379#COM-10422. ↑
9. See the official website of the Shahed Firuzkuhi school: http://shahedfk.sams.ir/frmMainSchools.aspx. ↑
10. Amir Akram Square and what was formerly known as Shah intersection were in the heart of old Tehran’s shopping and entertainment district. ↑
11. Sister Wendy Beckett (d. 2018), a popular British religious sister and art historian, whose short documentaries on art history aired by the BBC in the 1990s earned her international fame; for her biography see Peter Stanford’s obituary for The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/dec/26/sister-wendy-beckett-obituary. ↑
12. Jila Peacock’s hand printed edition of a book of ten poems from Hafez was exhibited at the British Museum exhibition, “Word into Art,” in 2006; see Venetia Porter, Word into Art: Artists of the Middle East (London: British Museum Press, 2006), https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG159548.  A new version of the book published by Sylph Editions won the British Book Design award in 2008; http://sylpheditions.com/ten-poems-from-hafez. ↑
13. Two of Jonathan Harvey’s pieces, “The Angels” and “The Annunciation” were included in St Andrews voice, Scotland’s festival of vocal and choral music in October 2014; https://jonathanharveycomposer.com/the-angels-and-the-annunciation-at-st-andrews-voices-2014/; Peacock showed “7 Heavens,” a collection of seven prints inspired by his music. ↑
14. Q 112:1; Abdel Haleem, M. A. S. , trans. “Purity [of Faith].” In The Qurʾan. Oxford Islamic Studies Online, http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/book/islam-9780192831934/islam-9780192831934-chapter-112?astart=1&asize=20 (accessed 10-Nov-2021). ↑
15. For more on Houshiary see https://www.shirazehhoushiary.com/; and on her exhibition at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdB3awA8J8I. ↑
16. On Shirin Neshat see https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/shirin-neshat. ↑