Relation Between Culture and Dream and Use of Those Element in the Art Work

Culture, Dreams, And Artwork Dreams and artwork are two things that seem to provide an invitation for interpretation, and cultural perspective is almost always going to influence that interpretation. At first blush, this statement may seem to fly in the face of Jungian interpretation, since the collective unconscious and the enduring interpretation of symbols might suggest that symbols would not vary across cultures. However, such an interpretation ignores the fact that Jung acknowledges the impact that individual culture has on the interpreter.

While symbols may retain a broader overall meaning across cultures, the details of those symbols are certainly influenced by the surrounding culture. Moreover, some symbols may be culturally specific. In fact, this paper will discuss the veil and its relation to Islam, and how the surrounding culture can color interpretations of the veil in art and in dreams. Because the symbols in dreams and artwork are influenced by culture, it is important to understand the cultural background of the person dreaming and creating the artwork.

Western art underwent a dramatic change in the Renaissance. "The world of religious feeling, of the irrational, and of mysticism, which had played so great a part in medieval times, was more and more submerged by the triumphs of logical thought" (Jaffe, p.243). However, Islamic art did not undergo the same transformation at the same time. Muslim nations experienced a scientific and cultural renaissance before Europe, and Muslim art had a different approach than European art. Muslim art, being strongly religious, always retained an element of the mystical.

This is reinforced in the idea that dreams, which, like artwork, have a subconscious element, are considered to be mystical by many Muslims. While both dreams and art can have universal meaning, understanding the cultural context can be critical to understanding the more specific intended. In this paper, the author's dreams and artwork will be critically examined. Therefore, it is important to understand my cultural background. I reside in the United States, but come from Iran.

As an Iranian woman, I would be expected to be veiled while in Iran, and, that expectation would not be a matter of choice, but a matter of coercion. This is a significant cultural detail, which varies among cultures; in non-Muslim countries most women are not veiled, and women are certainly not pressured to be veiled. Therefore, even if veils might have a greater over-arching symbolic meaning across cultures, it is important to recognize that veils may have specific meanings for Iranian women.

One of these meanings may be a feeling of enforced silence or gender-based oppression. However, an equally valid meaning may be as a form of intentional religious expression. It is important to keep in mind that this cultural-specific symbolism may enhance or compete with traditional ideas of what the veil may symbolize. It is also critical to recognize that in Iranian culture, dreams and dream interpretation are an important part of daily life.

Dream interpretation is not something left to discussions with psychologists or other professionals, but something that is part of daily life. In fact, this is something that permeates much of the Muslim world. There is an inconsistency in much of the Muslim world, where there are conflicts between Imperialist influences and traditional culture. Moreover, these conflicts require resolution. As people, "strive to resolve the conflicts generated by such inconsistencies, they employ those strategies which are culturally available to them. Dreams are one such strategy" (Ewing, p.59).

Understanding dream messages is important for Iranians because of a cultural belief that dreams are a signal of the future. This is a significant contrast to the Western view of dreams, which can be very dismissive. Westerners tend to ignore dreams, and label them as merely dreams. The idea that dreams can be prescient provides a critical underpinning to the cultural differences between Iranian culture and the prevailing western attitudes.

Moreover, Muslim culture gives women a certain authority in dream-life, which they lack in daily life in much of the Muslim world. "At the level of public or mass consciousness, Johansen and Gilsenan indicate another theme of Muslim dreaming, both traditional and contemporary, that of the empowerment of women as dreamers. The modern example is the cult of the saints in Egypt.

While women's dreams of saints commanding them to attend shrines are disparaged by scripturalist male religious authorities, such dreams allow women to penetrate more public social spaces" (Hermansen, p.84). Of course, the Iranian perspective on dream interpretation, while it may differ from the Western view of dream interpretation, is not isolated. Dream interpretation can form an important part of a culture.

In fact, "By studying dream sharing and the transmission of dream theories in their full social contexts, anthropologists have realized that both the researcher and the subject of research create a social reality that links them in important ways" (Tedlock, p.260). It is not only dream researchers who form these links with their subjects, but any person interacting with another person about dream interpretation.

Therefore, while I will interpret one of my dreams for this paper, it is important to realize that I am doing so with the knowledge that I am writing for a Western audience with Western attitudes and beliefs. While Iranian cultural beliefs about dreams are not quite as extreme as the Asabano, who view dreams as real experiences and "valued sources of information," they are not nearly as dismissive as Western views of dream life (Lohman, p.112).

Cultural relevancy is important, not only in understanding the role that dreams play in Iranian culture, but also in understanding the symbolism in the dreams and artwork that are interpreted in this paper. The dreams, artwork, and poetry investigated in this paper all feature symbols of veils. One of the important things to understand about veils in Iranian culture is that they are commonplace. One sees women in veils as a part of daily life.

Therefore, for veiled women to appear in dreams or in works of art is nothing unusual. In fact, while the veil may have great symbolic significance in Iranian art, it can also simply be a piece of clothing. However, the reality is that while a veil may be somewhat commonplace in dreams, when they appear in art, they are almost certainly symbolic of something.

However, what they symbolize may be different for the artist and for the person viewing the artwork, because veils can be symbolic of everything from joy to grief. Estelle Lovatt addresses the use of veils in art. She begins with the idea that "the veil has come to be observed as a declaration of religious and cultural differences, affiliated with foreign political assumptions of the East, and developing a symbol of cultural oppression" (Lovatt). However, the reality is that the veil is not an Islamic innovation.

On the contrary, the veil has been used as an item of clothing, and in art, since Biblical times. The veil has been used to symbolize everything from bridal virginity to a widow's grief (Lovatt). However, Lovatt also acknowledges that "post 9/11 the veil has been relied on as a potent abbreviation that takes on dress codes as symbolic of oppression" (Lovatt). Of course, that is a Western perspective of the veil. As an Iranian woman, dreaming of a veiled person does not necessarily symbolize oppression, though it certainly can.

However, the Western view of Islam also certainly colors the perception of veils in Islamic art by the Western observer. I recall a dream in which veils played a significant role. I stood in the yard of a mosque, without a veil, the wind blowing through her hair. Two or three other women were sitting near a small mosque pool. Suddenly, a hundred women with black veils begin passing me. In the dream, I felt a feeling of fear, because of being unveiled in the mosque.

The veils passed through my face, and I began walking way. I captured this dream with a line in a poem, "So that a hundred women with black veils can pass me in my dream and Leave me with fear of my city." After leaving the mosque, I found myself in front of the ruins of a building with Islamic architecture. Frequently, these ruined buildings are seen in photographs with veiled women passing by them.

However, in the dream, I was standing in front of the ruin, unveiled, and not passing the building. My interpretation of the dream draws upon my Iranian heritage. First, the dream shows a significant difference between me and the other women in the mosque. Though all of the women in my dream ostensibly believe in God, because of their presence in the mosque, we show their religion in different ways.

Something about the dream suggests that, even though all of the women in the dream believe in God, we do not belong in the same time and place. I felt ostracized by the veiled woman in the dream, and the burden of the notion that failing to wear the veil would be unacceptable. However, my presence in front of the ruins suggests that it was possible to worship anywhere.

My dream is interesting because I have left Iran and am in America, where I am free to wear a veil or not wear a veil, and where I can practice my religion freely. "The connection of dreams to social action is thought provoking when it occurs on the personal level" (Hermansen, p.84).

This dream, which symbolizes my rejection of traditional use of the veil as a means of subservience while still manifesting my desire to openly worship God, shows how modern Muslim women, like me, are literally changing the face of modern Islam. A dream such as that one, which demonstrates a conflict between traditional religion and a modern practitioner, is a potent dream. The dream is clearly pushing me to practice my religion, while I continue to assert my rights as a modern woman.

Whether or not I do this actually helps determine whether or not this dream was actually a significant one. "The significance of the content of a dream ultimately depends on subsequent events, on how the future actually unfolds… the social salience of a particular self representation will depend upon subsequent events and may shift over time as external conditions change. If the dreamer does not succeed in resolving conflicts by adopting the new self representation, the relevance of both the self representation and the dream may diminish" (Ewing, p.56-7).

At this moment, I cannot say that I have succeeded in resolving all of the conflicts present in my dream. I still fear rejection by traditional practitioners of my religion, particularly by women. Though the veil is seen as a means of oppression by men, a perception with which I somewhat agree, the reality is that social pressure from and by women to other women is a driving force behind the pressure to wear a veil, especially when one is outside those countries where the veil is a legal requirement.

What my interpretation of the dream reveals is that, while people attempt to understand their dreams, it is not actually the dreams that they are investigating. Instead, any dream interpretation does not actually involve the investigation of a dream, but how the person chooses to present that dream. In fact, dream interpretation is a social activity. Look at the above dream, which I shared. The audience only knows the details as I have shared them, and I have remembered those details that I found significant.

Moreover, that is certainly not the only dream that I have ever had featuring women with veils, but it is the one that I chose to share. This is not unique to my own perception of dream interpretation. On the contrary, Tedlock postulated that, "While dreams are private mental acts, which have never been recorded during their actual occurrence, dream accounts are public social performances taking place after the experience of dreaming.

When dreamers decide, for whatever reason, to share a dream experience, they choose an appropriate time and place, a specific audience and social context, a modality (visual or auditory), and a discourse or performance form" (Tedlock, p.249). This is certainly true. When dreams are interpreted solely by the dreamer, the risk is that overarching symbolic meaning may be missed because of the dreamer's personal attachment to details in the dream.

However, when dreams are shared, they are shared selectively, so that interpretation by a third-party may be limited by what details the dreamer chooses to share. In that way, the dreamer presenting a dream for interpretation is similar to an artist. "At the outset it may be objected that dream-work is an unconscious process involving internal mental operations while artistic labour is a conscious mental process controlling the manual manipulation of physical materials and implements.

These differences exist but the unconscious also plays a role in art-work and…there are parallels between the unconscious operations of dream-work and the physical transformations typical of artistic production" (Walker, p.109). Therefore, dream interpretation and the symbolic interpretation of artwork are similar processes. The first piece of art I chose to interpret is a composite piece featuring a collection of women, some veiled and some not veiled. The top of the piece is replete with the rounded curves of traditional Islamic architecture.

This use of the curve, the circle is an important symbol in artwork, because the circle is believed to represent the whole self. However, it is the images themselves that become significant. The women, who appear to be Semitic or Arabic in heritage, are featured in a variety of different poses. The photographs appear to be candid shots. The women mostly appear to be smiling. However, the most significant thing about the collage may be that the veils have no significance.

There is no dividing line between the women who are wearing the veils and the women who are.