ESMERALDA KOSMATOPOULOS

Cultural Likability takes a critical look at the ethnocentric way we as foreigners approach other cultures in the post-Internet age.

 

Inspired by Montesquieu's "Persian letters", the bodies of work takes the opposit approach to explore how cultural clichés and over-simplifications are formed, disseminated and perpetuated at a time were personal travelers blogs, colorful edited Instagram posts have replaced formal tourists guides as we all become virtual receivers and emitters of information. 

 

The work was created during a one month residency in Tehran in the Spring 2016. Kosmatopoulos took the Iranian society and her personal experience living in it as a case in point. She defined a list of historical, cultural and economical stereotypes of how Iranian culture is perceived abroad - be it thru the  mosaics of its historical monuments, the Persian carpets sold in the bazar, or the commodities exported abroad - and accumulated photographs that would emphasize these clichés. These raw images genuinely snapped during her daily explorations of the city, were then virtually transformed - beautified with photo editing filters and watermarked with an image of the shadow of my hand holding the phone - before being posted online on social media platforms where the validity of the message they conveyed was determined by the number of anonymous approvals (or "likes"), these images received.