ABSTRACT
Houman Mortazavi's plan was to 'create a character based on the visual language and advertising trends of the expatriate community, to promote some generic and useless services, and then to observe and document the reactions'. In addition to the newspaper advertisements, Mortazavi created some flyers and stickers posted on 'walls, poles, and telephone booths around the Iranian neighborhood of Westwood'. From these initial ideas there emerged a book published in 2004, consisting of a series of bilingual Persian and English posters capturing the fictional Simon Ordoubadi in various photographic poses, advertising services from a blending of spirituality and business, to language lessons, matchmaking, traditional Persian dance lessons, and babysitting, to the art of the Morse code. Mortazavi intervenes in this very economy of hybridity but parodies its self-congratulatory account of the realization of the American dream. The posters on which Ordoubadi appears advertising his varying services are masks donned by the Iranian immigrant to pass as a successful transplant.
