Point of Entry

Xavier Tavera

Xavier Tavera’s portraits—men with their children;
extreme fighters; people with objects of their work and desire—have
gained a passionate following. He graduated from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City in 1996
and came here the next year to continue his photographic studies at the Minneapolis College of Art and
Design. He’s shown at Exit Art in New York, and locally at Franklin ArtWorks
and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; he won a McKnight Fellowship in 2003.

Tavera mostly photographs in the large Latino community
here; it’s where he feels most comfortable. He has found that “the
mainstream community is very hermetic, and won’t let you in easily,” although
he’s found circles of artists to be welcoming. “I am the only one [in my
family] in the U.S. It is strange, I have ‘immigrant syndrome’: I don’t feel
completely at home here, and I have started to feel like a foreigner when I go
back to Mexico. I feel an immigrant everywhere. But I am fortunate to have my
own family here, with my wife and my two stepkids.” Tavera noted that while the
reaction to his work has been “very positive,” the reaction to his presence in
the U.S. has been “a lot different. It hasn’t changed over eleven years that I
have lived here. There is a lot of racism, a lot of stereotypes and too much
intolerance. All of this can be solved with education.”

Traditional in its means and its purposes, Tavera’s
large-format work seeks to show humanness as fully as possible. “Most of my
work has to deal with people. So there is an immediate connection or
disconnection to my work. I don’t feel misunderstood. I am still trying to
figure out why I photograph the people and things I photograph.” What does he
hope to bring to the mix of arts in the U.S.? “I would hope a little
diversity.”

Jila Nikpay

Jila Nikpay left Iran before the revolution in 1979. Her
films, often based on Persian poetry, have been shown at Walker Art Center and
elsewhere; her book Heroines, a study in photographs and poetry of women who
have had breast cancer, was published last year.

She left home at her parents’ urging; they thought a degree
from the U.S. would serve her better than one from Iran. “It was something
people did at that time,” she said, before the U.S. became “The Great Satan.”

“There is definitely a sense of liberation [to being here],
but it is balanced with the anxiety of facing the unfamiliar. Being an Iranian,
there is also an additional level of discomfort for me. I always feel haunted
by my country’s radical and isolationist policies and uncomfortable when people
talk to me about terrorism. That is when I feel constricted.”

Nikpay misses “the way Iranians socialize, their outward
warmth and generosity, the poetry, and the sense of history that is everywhere.
As a land, Iran has seen both glory and misery. That experience has given it an
ancient, melancholy soul. I miss that very much.” But an unbridgeable gap has
opened: “I have only been back twice since the revolution. As much as I love
Iran, it is hard for me to witness the changes that have overtaken my country.
Once you leave and lose your country like I have, the idea of home becomes more
abstract.”

Her own work struggles with such distance; as she
incorporates Persian and Iranian themes it becomes harder for American
audiences to grasp. “There is tacit expectation that if your work deals with
the Middle East it should be politically correct and you must treat the subject
superficially. This presents a serious dilemma for me,” she said.

Nikpay knows that her position between cultures gives her a
perspective unavailable to those with less complicated backgrounds; does she
feel that people here understand her work? “Living within two cultures that
don’t see eye-to-eye requires walking a tightrope. The more my work has become
specific in its subject, the less it is understood. Dialogue is essential for
this type of work because it needs to be decoded and in that process a deeper
understanding of cultures can take place. Surprisingly, I have found that this
is a lot to ask from most people; stereotyping cultures is much easier.”

I asked Nikpay what her perspective brings to the mix of the
arts here. Her response revealed American blind spots: “On a rudimentary level,
most immigrants can see what most natives don’t see in their own culture
because of its familiarity. On the grand scale, history reveals that even
the largest countries, like America, were founded by wanderers. Therefore
artists who can elaborate and expound upon this experience are in their own way
keeping the American spirit alive.

“The contemporary world is filled with the sense of
uncertainty, contradiction and multiple realties. These very conditions look a
lot like the experience of being uprooted and being thrown off one’s center. My
work speaks of all of these experiences because I know them very intimately.
That is what I bring to the mix.”