More about The Untitled Tomb

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There are few things less chill than not letting someone have a marked gravesite (*cough* *cough* Iranian government *cough*), so Barbad did the righteous thing of making a tombstone for a man who was denied one in The Untitled Tomb. Whatta cool guy!

For those of you who cannot read Persian, this piece reads, “Here Mim Kaf Alif [literally, his initials, M. K. A.] does not rest. He is dead. Layer beneath layer dead. Depth beyond depth. Each time deeper. Each death deeper. Stone upon stone. Each stone deeper. Each stone a death. Mim Kaf Mim Alif has no stone. Has never had. No trace of it (also to be understood as: so be it). Never in all deaths. December came and Mim Kaf Mim Alif was no longer [there]. Is not." And on top of that highly depressing sentiment, the font is the one typically used for newspaper death notices. All in all The Untitled Tomb is a downer, but a very important downer. It is a protest against the Iranian government, which in generations before would have gotten an artist killed. As far as we know there have been no assassination attempts directed at Barbad Golshiri...yet.

The Untitled Tomb is like a big, iron stencil so technically you could spray paint Mim Kaf Alif’s grave anywhere in the world, which a little bit defeats the purpose of a tombstone as an indication of a final resting place but whatevs. No one is actually going to spray paint it because 1) it’s deep in LACMA’s storage and 2) even if it was on display, you’d still be graffiting a very expensive work of art and would most likely go to jail. So don’t even think about it.

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