Chance
With Ahmadinejad coming to power, all art went towards more ideology or silence. the government wanted to adopt art as its tool and medium in line with the values of the Islamic Republic of Iran, so festivals and exhibitions with strange goals and slogans were set up.
Many artists who try to forget those days or deny their presence participated in this festival and exhibitions and were in line with its goals. The spiritual art exhibition was one of them. Artists were invited to present works on spirituality, ethics, and religion to the exhibition.
Ajac Kalantar, formerly known as Ali Kalantari, presented his installation work called “Nietzsche” to the exhibition, but the jury quickly rejected this work and suggested the artist present work in the spiritual dignity of the exhibition.
Ajac presented the idea of luck after that and shortly before the exhibition. A simple installation of ladders that goes to the sky, but it is shorter than its slogan. Iranian old wooden ladders, give it a grotesque form along with the name of the work and its ideal. Perhaps the only place where a critic understood this work was an article that was published in the “Haft (7)” magazine with a picture of a crow sitting on a ladder and a text in the criticism of the spiritual art exhibition with the headline Ladders shorter than the sky.
The privilege of this magazine was closed three years later because of this payment and reviews. And Ajac did not present any works to visual festivals and exhibitions since the time of the ideals of Ahmadinejad and his cabinet. And later, he was one of the boycotters of the “Fajr” and “Cinema Haghighat” festivals.