Mural: Leo’s Tail, Eyebrowed Sun
Inspired by mosaic decorations in several mosques and palaces, the lion and the sun together form a powerful expression resembling an emblematic symbol, a coat of arms. In Iranian history, this pairing can be traced back to astrology – the sun in the house of Leo – and has come to symbolise divine authority, royal power and beauty. Originally, the sun was portrayed with beautiful curly hair, a moustache and almond-shaped eyes, but with imperialism, such an ambiguous ideal of beauty could not represent a nation, and the face was eclipsed. After the 1979 revolution, Iran replaced the national emblem; despite this, the lion and the sun remain a strong symbol of Iranian heritage and Iranian nationalism. Nordlöf Malekian revives the sun’s original characteristics and reactivates the lion in several recent works, in which he explores what happens when animals and celestial bodies are given a human face.

Sculpture: A Lion’s Tail
Here, the tail of lion functions as a displaced emblem of royalty and nationhood, where astrological symbolism becomes a vehicle for queer reinterpretation.

Performance: The Lion’s Tail
When I renewed my passport in Karaj, Iran, over a decade ago, the photographer decided I looked “too feminine” for an official document— and yet, somehow, his retouching made me look even more feminine. – Afrang Nordlöf Malekian

In the lecture performance The Lion’s Tail, Afrang Nordlöf Malekian explores manipulation of passport photography through his own passport photos, along archival findings at the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut – hand colored photographs from the 1940s to the ’80s, with saturated shades of magentas, blues, and reds. Through a mixture of research, storytelling, and choreography, he traces retouching techniques to a mythologized sun, both female and male, shining beside a lion—an ancient couple from the depths of the universe: the sun in the house of Leo.

In my search for the origin of these photography retouching techniques, I uncovered something else—something profound that led me to an exiled lion and a flashing sun. – Afrang Nordlöf Malekian