میان حافظه جمعی و خیال آیینی: بازنمایی عاشورا در هنر خودآموخته (مطالعه موردی آثار کاظم ایزی با رویکرد ژیلبر دوران)

Introduction: Ashura has long held a central place in Iranian culture. Although commonly associated with mourning and religious remembrance, its meanings extend beyond ritual practice. For many communities, Ashura is closely linked to memory, visual culture, storytelling, and collective identity. Through ritual performance and artistic expression—especially in local and folk traditions—its meanings continue to be preserved across generations.
A significant example of this continuity appears in the paintings of Kazem Ezi. Despite lacking formal artistic training, Ezi’s works demonstrate a deep visual understanding of Ashura rituals and symbolism. Rooted in local mourning traditions and lived ritual experience, his paintings do not simply depict ritual; they reinterpret and emotionally reactivate it.
This study examines three Ashura-related paintings by Kazem Ezi through the theoretical framework of Gilbert Durand. It explores how imagination operates in these works and how their visual language engages with death, martyrdom, memory, temporality, and continuity.
Background: Imagination plays a central role in shaping human experience. It informs memory, belief, emotion, and meaning. Gilbert Durand understands imagination not as fantasy, but as a symbolic structure through which human beings interpret the world through images.
For Durand, images are active agents of meaning. They do not merely reflect reality; they organize symbolic experience. Through them, societies express death, loss, transcendence, and continuity.
A central distinction in Durand’s theory is between the diurnal regime and the nocturnal regime of the imaginary. The diurnal regime is associated with opposition, separation, heroism, and confrontation. The nocturnal regime is linked to repetition, continuity, reconciliation, and transformation. Durand also identifies forms in which these structures overlap and generate synthetic structures.
This framework is particularly useful for the study of Ashura rituals in Iran. Rituals such as ta'zieh, nakhl-gardani, and sang-zani involve movement, rhythm, symbolic objects, and performance. Through repetition, they preserve and reactivate collective memory. In this sense, painting becomes more than documentation; it transforms ritual into a symbolic visual language shaped by memory and imagination.
Research Questions and Method: This study focuses on three Ashura ritual scenes painted by Kazem Ezi: “the nakhl-gardani procession”, “the encounter between Hurr and Abbas ibn Ali”, and “the sang-zani ceremony”.
It addresses three questions: Which structures of imagination appear most prominently in these paintings?  How are symbolic meanings articulated through visual composition? How have local Ashura rituals shaped the artist’s visual imagination?
The study adopts a qualitative descriptive-analytical approach. The paintings are examined through visual analysis, with attention to composition, symbolism, repetition, spatial arrangement, and ritual elements. Durand’s theory provides the interpretive framework.
Analysis and Findings: In the first painting, traces of the diurnal regime and the heroic structure remain visible; however, the dominant framework belongs to the nocturnal regime, especially the mystical and synthetic structures.
The presence of Abbas ibn Ali beside the nakhl suggests that heroic imagination remains active, yet it is absorbed into ritual order and collective memory. Death appears not as pure tragedy, but as part of ritual continuity and collective remembrance.
The nakhl functions not only as a ritual object but also as a mnemonic structure that transforms Ashura from a singular historical event into a collective and transhistorical experience. Signs of martyrdom coexist with symbols of continuity, suggesting that death is imagined not as an ending but as part of ongoing symbolic regeneration. Through nakhl-gardani, historical time is suspended, and Ashura becomes present in ritual time.
The second painting is dominated by the diurnal regime, particularly the heroic structure. Imagination here operates through confrontation, separation, and heroization. The enlarged scale of the figures, vertical emphasis, and direct encounter between Abbas ibn Ali and Hurr place the image within the oppositional logic of the diurnal regime. Ashura remains represented as a historical and heroic event.
The inscription naming Hurr ibn Yazid reinforces this historical framework. The image has not yet entered suspended ritual time or transhistorical memory. Although minor traces of the nocturnal regime appear, they remain secondary to the heroic structure. Death is therefore represented as a dramatic historical moment. The dominant philosophy of the image is heroic resistance to death.
In the third painting, traces of the diurnal regime remain; yet the dominant system belongs to the synthetic structure and the nocturnal regime. Opposition no longer functions through confrontation; instead, it is integrated into a collective ritual order. The emphasis shifts from heroic individuality to collective rhythm and ceremonial participation.
The repetitive movement of the sang-zani participants, the symmetry of the bodies, and the structured composition present mourning as a reproducible ritual form. Bodies appear not as individual figures but as parts of a collective whole. Individual identity dissolves into ritual participation. Death and loss are transformed into stable collective memory through repetition.
At the same time, contemporary elements such as loudspeakers and microphones appear alongside traditional ritual forms, showing that ritual remains active in the present. These modern elements do not oppose tradition; rather, they sustain the continuity of ritual memory. This coexistence of tradition and contemporaneity is central to the painting’s synthetic structure.
The most significant feature of this image is its cyclical understanding of time. Through the repeated performance of sang-zani, Ashura is continually brought into the present. Historical time becomes lived experience. Time is no longer linear but cyclical, ritualized, and renewed.
Conclusion: The analysis of Kazem Ezi’s Ashura paintings through Gilbert Durand’s theory demonstrates that religious imagination in these works is dynamic and multilayered. It emerges through movement between the diurnal and nocturnal regimes. This movement begins with heroic confrontation and gradually develops toward ritual memory, collective participation, and cyclical ritual time.
The findings show that the heroic structure progressively moves away from epic individuality and becomes absorbed into collective ritual order. Death is initially confronted through opposition and heroization but gradually becomes integrated into ritual repetition, memory, and continuity. Ashura is therefore transformed from a historical event into a living and continually reproduced experience.
A major finding is the transformation of temporality within the paintings. Time shifts from historical temporality toward ritual and cyclical temporality. Ashura rituals do not simply represent the past; they reactivate it in the present. Through this process, mourning and martyrdom become part of cultural memory.
The study also shows that ritual in Ezi’s paintings is not merely represented iconographically but also structures imagination. Repetition, bodily rhythm, ceremonial order, and recurring Ashura symbols organize the image.
Finally, Ezi’s self-taught artistic practice plays a decisive role in shaping this visual imagination. His paintings emerge from lived experience, collective memory, and direct participation in Ashura rituals. Taken together, they reveal how religious imagination in Iranian self-taught art transforms historical death into ritual memory and continuity through repetition and participation.