Semiotic Reading of the Martyr’s Body Represented in Selected Samples of Iranian Contemporary Paintings (1981-2022)

In contemporary art, the representation of the human body gains more attention and popularity as it could signify more complicated and symbolic meanings. In post-modernist paintings human body has been represented in forms and conditions that had not been displayed ever before. In this way, the depiction of wounded and dead bodies signifies human trauma and suffering in the present era. But, the injured and lifeless body of a martyr in contemporary Iranian painting does not mean to convey pain and destruction.  The main issue is that, martyrdom is one of the sublime concepts of Iranian-Islamic culture which has long been considered in the visual arts of Iran. In the Islamic religion, there is a significant conceptual link between heroism and martyrdom. In Islamic attitude, a martyr is someone who goes to war for the sake of the country and people and the satisfaction of God and is killed in this way. Therefore, the martyr in the present Iranian culture is a hero/heroine and the depiction of martyrs and martyrdom is one of the points of interest of contemporary Iranian painters. When a person becomes a role model for the lives of others, he/she has moved to the realm of becoming a legend. A hero is a person who accepts the limitations, dangers and problems and enters the field of action, because the body is perishable, but her/his action is immortal. Artists try to express their feelings and ideology of heroism and sublime through the depiction of martyrs.
Unlike the image of the hero in traditional Iranian painting, the picture of a martyr in contemporary Iranian painting is not featured with perfect body and splendid ornaments; the representation of the martyr's body in contemporary paintings has a symbolic function and indicates something more than the objective body. Considering the significance of human body in contemporary art, the aims of the present study are to identify the ways in which contemporary Iranian artists have portrayed the body of a martyr as a myth and a national hero, and to explain the semantic implications of the signs used in the depiction of the body of a martyr in these works. In order to achieve the goal of the research, we try to answer these questions: what are the visual characteristics of the martyr’s body depicted in contemporary Iranian paintings? And what are the connotations of the pictorial signs used in the depiction of the martyr’s body in those paintings?
The research method is descriptive-analytical, and pictorial semiotics has been used in the analysis of research samples. Documentary and field methods are used for data collecting. The statistical population of the research includes those paintings that were executed between 1360 and 1400 Solar Hijri and represent martyr’s body in a figurative manner. 14 paintings have been selected as research samples; the criterion for selecting the samples was the depiction of the moment of martyrdom and the body of the martyr in the paintings.
As a result, we can mention some of the contemporary Iranian painters’ approach to using pictorial signs in representing martyr’s body and the connotation of these signs, which were obtained based on the study of statistical society and research samples:

Realist approach in imaging: images that are more similar to objective reality are always more believable and will have more audience. In this way, the painters, using the realistic method, make the existential dimensions of martyrdom and the character of the martyr, which cannot be seen, visible to the audience and therefore believable.
The use of symbolic expression: the use of familiar metaphors and symbols for the audience's society allows the artist to give more meaning to the image and to link it to the narratives that exist in the audience's mind.
Using the rules of visual communication: In this approach, the artist emphasizes the hero's place from a formal aesthetic point of view by using visual principles and arrangements. In most research samples, the body of the martyr is placed in the center of the image or in the focal points (based on the golden ratio) and at the top of the frame.

Finally, it is important to mention that the body of a martyr in contemporary Iranian paintings is painted with wounds, headless and handless and with signs of injury. However, these physical injuries, not only indicate the weakness of the body, but also connect these bodies to the heroism in the Karbala’s narratives. In depicting the body of a martyr, the desired physical perfection is not considered, and the visual signs indicate the sacrifice of the body in order to achieve the spiritual goal and to be close to God.