Performance: The Lion’s Tail
Mural: Leo’s Tail, Eyebrowed Sun
Sculpture: A 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