Farhad Moshiri (b. 1963)

Presenting a subversive socio-political commentary on Iranian culture and politics, Farhad Moshiri's Choc Line from the Sweet Dream series offers an appetising and visually arresting combination of enticing fancy cakes arranged in a single line recreating a featureless figure. Referencing the lavish culinary excesses of high society as well as the elaborately ornamented plaster buildings of Moshiri's native Tehran, each of the impasto peaks, painstakingly squeezed through a piping bag like confectionery, provide a particularly sculptural tactility. The revelation that these 'cakes' are inedible and tasteless highlights the superficiality of love and materialism, bringing about a sense of emptiness.

The figure, the outline of which also conjures up this notion of emptiness, provides a social remark on the censorship practices, particularly of figures in magazines and advertisements, enforced by the Iranian government. Moshiri further provides a witty commentary with the title Choc Line, a play on the phrase "chalk line" used by police to outline bodies in a crime scene. Perhaps referencing the 'death' so to speak of liberalism and personality in Iran, the work thus becomes more morbid in tone, the juxtaposition of luscious 'pastries' against a sophisticating thematic undercurrent instantly makes the work both captivatingly seductive and sinister.