Wise men from the east

Zoroastrian traditions in Persia and beyond

 24 October 2013 – 27 April 2014 at British Museum, London

Farvahar, Aida Foroutan, 2003. The winged figure is seen by the Iranian artist as a symbol of national identity. © Aida Foroutan 

by Wall Street International

This small exhibition will explain Zoroastrianism, an ancient but living religion named after the Prophet Zarathustra, through objects and coins from Persia (Iran) and beyond.

The display will feature a variety of ancient and modern objects and coins, and will highlight the importance of Zoroastrian traditions in other religions. It will touch on the concept and imagery of the Three Kings of the Christian tradition, who are described in the New Testament (Matthew 2.2) as Magi from the east – Zoroastrian priests in the Persian tradition.

Magnificent Islamic coins from Mughal India which follow the Iranian Zoroastrian calendar adopted by the emperor Akbar (1556–1605) will also be on display.

Modern objects will show the ongoing legacy of this ancient Iranian religion and its significance as a symbol of national identity for Zoroastrian and non-Zoroastrian Iranians in modern Persia and beyond.

Silver coin of Bahram I (AD 273–76), Sasanian king of Iran, showing the Zoroastrian fire altar. © The British Museum

Set of six Parsi tiles from Mumbai, 1980-89, showing in the centre the sacred fire, on the left the legendary King Lohrasp of the Iranian epic tradition, and on the right the Prophet Zarathustra. Donated by Adervad S. Deboo. © The Trustees of the British Museum

Modern gold pendant showing the Zoroastrian winged figure, fravashi/farvahar, which symbolises the immortal spirit of each human being that defends the material world against evil. Private Collection. © V.S. Curtis

Via WSI


Wall Street International Magazine: Wise men from the east

Persia meets Europe in Zurich

by le mag, Euronews

The artistic dialogue between Persia and Europe is at the heart of a new exhibition in the Swiss city of Zurich.

It explores the way Europe and Persia, today’s Iran, began to inch closer 400 years ago – politically, economically, culturally and artistically. Europe dispatched trading companies and religious orders; the shah sent his ambassadors. Rubens drew inspiration from Persian miniatures and Muhammad Zaman created works inspired by Italian and French painters.

An exchange that lives on to this day according to curator Axel Langer: “I think it really comes from both sides. There isn’t one side which has less or more [impact] than the other. But, what I thought is interesting is that the two react differently to each others’ art,” he said.

The adaptation of famous engravings by Italian artist Marcantonio Raimondi is a prime example of the way European art influenced Persian painters. Semi-naked bodies had long featured in Persian painting, but nudes were used solely to illustrate stories and were not intended to be sensual. The encounter with European art brought about a dramatic artistic evolution.

“The Persian nude was something that might have been developed through contact with European sources. We don’t expect it, because we have a certain prejudice or certain idea of Islamic ethical behaviour, and we think this didn’t exist, but it is not true. it was for private use only. It was not copying European sources but they turned it to something new,” said Axel Langer.

Persian art was enthusiastically imitated in Poland. The first silk sashes, which soon became a must-have accessory among the Polish nobility, were brought over from Persia in the 17th century. By the end of the 18th century, sashes with Persian patterns were made in Poland.
The exhibition also features artworks by seven contemporary Iranian artists that reflect the globalisation of cross-cultural exchange:

“We integrated contemporary art because we wanted to show that Iranian art is also global. That means it is not influenced anymore by Europeans or only the West, but this is a kind of art that is reacting to a global market or to global ideas, which might react to an Iranian presence or situation, but which are also giving ideas to audiences all over the world.”

“The Fascination of Persia” runs at Zurich’s Rietberg Museum until January 21.

The dialogue between Persia and Europe is echoed by the work of the Nour Ensemble, a unique artistic experiment combining Iranian and European music. Euronews’ Mohammad Mohammadi attended a concert by the group at the Zurich museum.

The head of the ensemble, Christophe Rezai, explained how it came about: “Why did I chose medieval music for the European part of our ensemble? The reason is I think it has three elements in common with Persian music. Firstly, it is modal. Secondly, it is inspired by the people. And the other common element is improvisation, which played an important part in medieval music,” he said.

The ensemble is made up of French and Persian artists, who share their musical tradition and reinvent traditional Kurdish, Persian and European repertoires.

“Everyone in our ensemble plays his part by bringing in his own musical tradition. Each artist engages in the conversation in his own language. For instance, one part is Iranian and then turns European, before the two are mixed to create a new language,” said Christophe Rezai.

The outcome? A creative melting pot of classical, traditional and contemporary music.


Via Euronews

'Persian Visions,' Ovations concert promise 'diverse immersion' in Iranian culture

“Untitled”, Arman Stephanian, 2003. Courtesy MaineToday Media.

Exhibit Catalog (PDF)

by David Carkhuff, Portland Daily Sun

The universal character of art is one of the revelations offered by an exhibit of Iranian photography at University of Southern Maine.

The lesson: "It's not so foreign after all. Art does flourish, it's part of our aspect of being and it will flourish even at times of repression," said Carolyn Eyler, director of Exhibitions and Programs at University of Southern Maine in Gorham and Portland.

"Persian Visions: Contemporary Photography from Iran," on display until Dec. 8, gives visual clues to life in Iran, a nation also known as Persia with deep roots in ancient Asia. For years, Iran has dominated the news cycle in America for different reasons, generally as a result of policy tensions and political conflicts. Yet, the photographs reach into a deeper understanding of Iranian life, Eyler noted.

"It's interesting that the country that we knew as Persia still exists, there's a place, a people, a culture, there's a particular sensibility," said Eyler, describing a "very refined aesthetic sensibility," as illustrated in ornate tapestries and other works of art. The photography often cuts against the grain of tradition. albeit with subtlety and nuance.

"From over a dozen artists, 58 works, you can see a variety of personal expressions, which in totality gives us a glimpse, at least a slice of the overall cultural sensibility," Eyler said.

Reza Jalali, American-Iranian scholar and writer, and coordinator of the USM Office of Multicultural Student Affairs, explained in a press release, "Modern Iran, the heir to the 2,500 year-old Persian civilization, is home to a vibrant artistic community, which despite state censorship and decades-old sanctions, continues to create and express art that demands our attention."

Jalali will explore the context of contemporary Persian performing and visual arts Saturday with a lecture, "Unveiling Contemporary Iranian Arts," at USM's Hannaford Hall in Portland. The lecture, from 7 p.m. to 7:45 p.m., is a lead-in to another cultural experience, that of a concert by four-time Grammy nominee Kayhan Kalhor, renowned for his mastery of traditional Persian music. Kalhor will perform at Hannaford Hall at 8 p.m., in a production by Portland Ovations, a premier nonprofit performing artists group active in Portland since 1931.

Aimee Petrin, executive director of Portland Ovations, said the group has sought out Kalhor for some time. "He's been on our wish list for several years," she said.

The "Persian Visions" exhibit helped spur Saturday's concert into becoming a reality, Petrin said.

"Once we heard through our partners at USM that this exhibit was coming, we thought this is the perfect timing," Petrin said.

The Gorham Art Gallery will be open noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday (at presstime, indications were the Portland gallery would be open Friday but not Saturday, per normal hours). So, with a little bit of planning, for those embarking on an art-and-music combination, the photography exhibit could be the first part of a multi-pronged experience.

"I think if someone goes to the exhibit, and then comes to the preconcert lecture and then the performance they would get a pretty instant and diverse immersion in Persian art," Petrin said.

"I think they provide different insights into Persian art," Petrin said of the images and music.
Eyler said the Persian photography has parallels in history.

Speaker Pamela Karimi, assistant professor of art history at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, at a lecture earlier this year in Portland, expressed an analogy of African-Americans whose art often held masked meanings.

"All countries have had their moments, with the music of African-Americans, looking back to the 1920s and '30s there are a lot of coded words and things they couldn't say directly," Eyler said.

Likewise, the photography exhibit features "cultural references and perhaps a sense of repression that can only be pointed toward," she said.

"It appears it's a very important culture particularly right now to get to know better," Eyler said. "Isn't it wonderful that here's an opportunity to bypass all the middlemen, the media, and stand face to face in front of a personal expression of an Iranian or Persian artist?"

At USM, the multicultural population is one of the growing populations of students, reflecting changing demographics of the Portland area, Eyler said. This trend, she said, adds significance to the USM art exhibit, the Portland Ovations concert and a Portland Museum of Art exhibit, "Ahmed Alsoudani: Redacted," from American-Iraqi artist and Maine College of Art graduate Ahmed Alsoudani.

“Untitled”, Ahmad Nateghi, 1998. Courtesy  MaineToday Media.

For more about the Master of Persian Music: Kayhan Kalhor concert, visit www.portlandovations.org.
For more about Persian Visions: Contemporary Photography from Iran," visit http://www.usm.maine.edu/gallery.

Event Details:

• "Unveiling Contemporary Iranian Arts" at Hannaford Hall, University of Southern Maine, Portland. Saturday, Nov. 23, 7 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. Writer and community organizer, Reza Jalali introduces examples and explores the context of contemporary Persian performing and visual arts.

• Master of Persian Music: Kayhan Kalhor, at Hannaford Hall, University of Southern Maine, Portland. Saturday, Nov. 23, 8 p.m. Internationally acclaimed virtuoso on the kamancheh (a four-stringed, upright Persian fiddle, ancestor to the violin), four-time Grammy nominee Kayhan Kalhor is a major creative influence in today's global music scene. His performances of traditional Persian music and multiple collaborations have won him fans around the world. Recognized for his classical playing and compositions, Kalhor has appeared in solo recital at Carnegie Hall and as part of Lincoln Center's MostlyMozart Festival. He is a founding member of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project. In Portland, he will be joined by additional musicians, to be announced, for an evening of masterful music.

• A University of Southern Maine art exhibit of 58 works of photography and video installations reflecting life in contemporary Iran is now open and on display until Dec. 8. "Persian Visions: Contemporary Photography from Iran," noon to 4 p.m., Tuesday to Sunday, Art Gallery, Gorham Campus, and 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., Monday to Friday, AREA Gallery, located in the Woodbury Campus Center, Portland Campus. "Persian Visions" was developed by Hamid Severi for the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran, and Gary Hallman of the Regis Center for Art, University of Minnesota and is toured by International Arts & Artists, Washington, D.C.


Via Portland Daily Sun

Infinite Regress

Two Iranian Artists Multiply Their Spiritual Images

The Golden Gate Bridge and clouds are kaleidoscoped to resemble the mind-expanding art adorning mosques. Courtesy SF Weekly

by Jonathan Curiel, SF Weekly

With an arts tradition that goes back more than 5,000 years, and a modern art scene that embraces everything from graffiti to avant-garde film, Iran is one of the world's greatest countries to experience the visual arts. It's a travesty that Iran has been off-limits to most Americans since 1979, when a revolution turned it into a pariah state. But the détente that has emerged on the political front with the election of a new Iranian president (who, by the way, is on Twitter) parallels the opening of three new exhibits that are giving Americans a first-hand look at the intricacies of Iranian art and sculpture.

The largest show, "Iran Modern," is at New York's Asia Society, but San Francisco has two sterling exhibits: "The First Family" at Haines Gallery, which features the work of longtime Iranian artist Monir Farmanfarmaian, and "Twisted Sisters: Reimagining Urban Portraiture" at San Francisco City Hall, which features the work of Sanaz Mazinani, who spent her early life in Tehran and now lives in Bernal Heights.

Mazinani's montages take traditional Persian motifs and infuse them with modern touches — and a San Francisco aesthetic. Golden Gate Bridge, for example, has red sections of the span's towers floating in a blue sky, where they connect with cloud puffs and geometric shapes to form an otherworldly kaleidoscope. Influenced by patterns found in traditional Persian carpets, and utilizing Persian blues that adorn some of Iran's most dazzling structures, Mazinani made Golden Gate Bridge for a series she calls "Forever in the Sky." In 16th and Mission, also on display at City Hall, Mazinani has tall, thin palm trees floating in the air next to an assemblage of alluring shapes. In Sutro Tower, it's the top of San Francisco's tallest transmission structure that hovers high in the sky, Persian-style. The patterns — like the patterns of floral shapes, calligraphy, and architectural swoops that cover Iranian mosques — are designed to both focus the mind and free it.

"I was doing research, and I found that the reason Iranian mosques are covered in this pattern is to allow your eyes to fall into it and to go elsewhere intellectually," says Mazinani. "It's a spiritual thing."

"Twisted Sisters," which celebrates San Francisco's Sister City relationship with Zurich, Switzerland, showcases the work of five Bay Area artists who tear down touristic stereotypes of San Francisco. Mazinani, who's 35, was an ideal choice for the exhibit — someone who's lived in four countries (Iran, Turkey, Canada, the United States) and knows how easy it is for reductive impressions to become the normative view. Her family left Iran in 1989, after the Iran-Iraq war that killed more than a million people. Mazinani, who moved to the Bay Area in 2009 to get an MFA from Stanford, frequently addresses issues of war and conflict in her work, as with her photographic series of the Occupy movement and her art series examining media representations of war. Mazinani's "Sky" series combines painterly touches with photography. Mazinani has been taking images of clouds for a decade.

"I was always really interested in borders and issues around land and landlessness, and being an immigrant, and I found it really rewarding to look up at the sky and see these beautiful clouds moving — without any limitations, without checkpoints, without passports," she says. "I was making works about war and conflicts and activism and all this stuff and this is a way for me to also make it beautiful. It creates an accessible way for people to enter my work. They can see what they want in it. I really like having work that's open to interpretation."

Monir Farmanfarmaian's art at Haines Gallery also has an interpretive quality, and adopts patterns that are completely transfixing. Farmanfarmaian, who's almost 90, used thousands of mirror pieces to create shimmering triangles, squares, hexagons, decagons, and other shapes. Mirrors are overlaid on mirrors. Angles jut into other angles. Approaching one of Farmanfarmaian's creations is like approaching a hall of cascading mirrors, except that Farmanfarmaian's works are small — anywhere from 2 to 4 feet across.

In Persian culture, the mirror is used frequently in art, architecture, and religious settings to signify a connection to the divine. So Farmanfarmaian's art at Haines Gallery — besides being intensely beautiful — has an underlying spiritual element. It's there if you want it, just as it is in Mazinani's art. Like Mazinani, Farmanfarmaian has lived in both Iran and the United States — Farmanfarmaian's initial tenure was in the 1940s and 1950s, in New York, and put her in touch with some of America's most formidable artists of the time, including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Andy Warhol. Warhol was a fan. Farmanfarmaian's early years in the U.S., where she studied at Parsons School of Design and at Cornell, changed her life and her art. So did returning to Iran in the late '50s, where she gave Iranians a new way to experience the art form of mirrors.

"I did art because I loved to express myself, but didn't expect that I'm doing something unusual. Now, I realize that I have done something unusual that brought the medium of mirror work and geometric design for the public," Farmanfarmaian told an interviewer last year. "It was always in the ceiling or the wall or the palaces, but it never was in people's houses."

Iran's 1979 revolution was devastating to Farmanfarmaian. The country's religious authorities confiscated her early works, and she fled to New York — though she returned to Iran in 2004. She says Iran makes the only type of thin glass that's ideal for her work. Farmanfarmaian laughs a lot in interviews. She's happy to still be an active artist using a medium she loves. Mirrors, she says, give everyone "a reflection of your soul." That type of Sufi thought is embedded in Iran's culture, and is carried — not surprisingly — in the art of both Farmanfarmaian and Mazinani, wherever they choose to live or exhibit.

Details: Through Jan. 17 at San Francisco City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, S.F. Free; 554-6093 or sfartscommission.org.Through Dec. 21 at Haines Gallery, 49 Geary, S.F. Free; 397-8114 or hainesgallery.com.

Via SF Weekly

Iran's artists warn US and European sanctions are affecting their work

Tehran-based artist Sohrab Kashani could not visit US due to visa 'complications' – and he's not the only one

Super Sohrab in Azadi Square: 'He doesn't do many impressive things.'

Sohrab Kashani, The Adventure of Super Sohrab, 2011. Image courtesy the artist and Guardian.

by Saeed Kamali Dehghan, Guardian

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Super Sohrab. Iran's own superman stands in front of Tehran's famous Azadi Square, the site of the country's 1979 Islamic revolution as well as the mass popular uprising of 2009. His cape is a piece of green cloth, the battle armour his own underwear and on his chest is the abbreviations for Super Sohrab in the Persian alphabet. He is a symbol of the contemporary Iranian art world, whose creative wings have been clipped.

"He doesn't do many impressive things," said Sohrab Kashani, the artist turned superman. "He washes the dishes, makes pasta, does the laundry, checks his Facebook profile. He is actually very isolated."

Super Sohrab plays a leading role in Kashani's photographs, videos and comics. His life mirrors that of the average Iranian artist plagued by domestic censors and blanket international sanctions. Recently, Kashani was due to speak at Iran: Art and Discourse, a symposium in New York hosted by the Asia Society and the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. But to the dismay of organisers and participants, gathered to study Iranian contemporary art, Kashani was unable to participate because the US authorities did not respond to his request for a visa in time. Another guest speaker, Hamid Keshmirshekan, an art historian and editor from Tehran, was issued a visa but not in time.

Kashani attended the seminar via Skype and introduced the Sazmanab Platform for Contemporary Arts, where he organises the schedule of exhibitions and lectures, and hosts artists who are independent and look for alternative spaces. In his talk he voiced his frustration at the extent to which the Iranian artistic community has been hurt by western sanctions.

"Sanctions have directly affected Iranian artists," Kashani told the Guardian in a phone interview. "There are certain materials artists here can't find, there are paints they can't buy and digital equipment they can no longer access."

In the past few years, as the US and its European allies have tightened their grip on Iran, squeezing its economic and international movement, Kashani said several artists have been forced to abandon their work.

Iranian government officials, meanwhile, appear to be able to travel more easily. In September, Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, attended a Q&A session in New York held by the Asia Society. "There are sculptors who are unable to work because they can't find the materials and some have instead turned to video art," he said.

Monroe Price, the director of Centre for Global Communications Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said he was disappointed not to have the two important figures attend the conference.

"In our work on information flows in Iran, we continuously search for zones of creativity. Each zone has a specialised interaction between citizen and state, between creativity and control. Each zone has a different relationship between the outside and the in, the diaspora and the home," he said.

"We think it's important for a larger public to see these processes so they have a more educated sense of Iran as a society, different from the monotone portrayal that usually abounds."

Experts, curators and gallery owners participating at the Asia Society conference echoed Kashani's frustration. Fereshteh Daftari, an Iranian curator who recently put together an exhibition of modern Iranian art for the Asia Society, said the complications of sanctions meant she could only bring one piece of work from Iran.

Samuel Cutler, a policy adviser who has dealt with sanctions in the past, said the import of Iranian artwork is, for the most part, exempt from sanctions.

"Complications on the US side may arise when it comes to shipping Iranian art or paying Iranian artists for their work," he told the Guardian.

"There are a number of scenarios where a gallery interested in importing Iranian art will need to perform activities that may still be subject to the regulations. This would require a specific licence from the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac), which for this type of transaction can take four to six months, though to my knowledge Ofac is always happy to grant such licences."

Cutler said that a major obstacle is a lack of understanding on the part of the US art galleries as to what exactly is and is not allowed under the law.

Shiva Balaghi, a cultural historian of the Middle East at Brown University, decried the resulting lack of Iranian art in the west. "Iran's artists and film-makers are, in my opinion, some of our most important public intellectuals," she said. "In the 20th century they supplanted the poet as the voice of Iranian society. Iranian art, then, both reflects and helps shape Iranians' attitudes on a range of issues."

Sandra Skurvida, a New York-based independent curator and the convenor of the symposium, said many art institutions in the US anticipate difficulties and don't make the effort to bring in Iranian work.

She pointed out that art is categorised as information – which is exempt from sanctions. "This is the kind of meta-space of nominal freedom that we claim as actual freedom," she said."Despite this legal definition of art as information and therefore exempt from sanctions, many art institutions in the US pre-emptively apply these restrictions to themselves."

Other prominent Iranian contemporary artists who have been featured in international exhibitions include Newsha Tavakolian, Barbad Golshiri, Behrang Samadzadegan, Shahab Fotouhi, Neda Razavipour, Nazgol Ansarinia and Samira Eskandarfar.

Via Guardian

Politics on canvas

Nicky Nodjoumi and the New York enclave

The artist's work transcends borders and displays a worldliness that is a hallmark of Iranian artists in New York.

Nodjoumi's artwork walks a fine line between art and politics.

Nicky Nodjoumi, Hasty Retreat, 2012, Oil on Canvas, 70 x 50 in / 177.8 x 127 cm. Courtesy of Taymour Grahne Gallery.

by Hamid Dabashi, Al Jazeera

The corner of Laight and Hudson in New York, where the newly established Taymour Grahne Gallery was exhibiting its very first show, seemed like an odd place for an Iranian artist to reflect back on his lifetime achievement. But early in September, the gallery was the scene of a spectacular opening featuring the large-scale oil paintings of Nicky Nodjoumi, Chasing the Butterfly and Other Recent Paintings.

After decades of unwavering, principled, and quiet work, Nodjoumi has finally arrived as a major aesthetic visionary of his contemporary time, having carved a commanding angle on our lived experiences from the assured perspective of a global worldliness that has patiently and consistently crossed all artificial borders of identity and politics.

Today it is the overwhelming political force of his art that immediately attracts his viewers. The Huffington Post captured the very essence of the evident political implication of Nodjoumi's art when covering his exhibition: "Iranian Artist Nicky Nodjoumi Talks Revolutions, Secret Police And The Vietnam War."

Politics as art

This is perhaps self-evident and even unavoidable. But in response to a question regarding the influence of current politics on his work, Nodjoumi responds: "Yes and no. I follow current events, especially in Iran, almost religiously. Aside from world events, however, I have other preoccupations. Naturally, when I start to work, the political events of the day occupy part of my mind, but imagination is also a part of the function of the mind. Inspirations that shape my work come from a lot of different places." How are we exactly to read that self-professed interface between fact and fantasy, reality and imagination, politics and aesthetics?

On another occasion, a commentator suggested, "Nodjoumi's artwork walks a fine line between art and politics" - in response to which he muses, "I don't have a clear idea. I play with ideas and put them together." That fine line, if we were to follow that appropriate metaphor, is the fact that the politics of our contemporary realities occasions (not influences) Nodjoumi's aesthetics.

In yet another descriptive reading of his work, by Holland Cutter of the New York Times, we read perhaps a more accurate angle on the manner in which politics and aesthetics of Nodjoumi's work cohabit:

"The new paintings at Taymour Grahne are political too, but the tone is different. Visually the work is light, even airy, and filled with absurdist, mocking incident. Men in suits and mullahs in robes share space with horses, apes and apparitional figures from classical Persian paintings. Almost nothing feels grounded or organic: figures are composed of mismatched legs, torsos and heads, and seem unbound by perspective or gravity. Only in a series of magisterial black-and-white ink drawings does the mood tense up." 

To understand the aesthetic force of that cohabitation we need first to come to terms with the imaginative geography of its production.

Storytelling on canvas

I have known Nodjoumi's work since my youth as an undergraduate student in Tehran of 1970's, and have followed his extraordinarily poised and purposeful artistic career closely ever since, and particularly when we both found ourselves living in New York over the last quarter of a century - and I've had many occasions to talk to him and write about his work, on and off camera.

Nodjoumi's surreal hybridisation of historical and phantasmagorical imageries intercut with sharp political commentaries and none of the reviewers who have reported on this show could have missed those strong ingredients. There are as many Shia clerics loitering on his canvases as clean-shaven European- and American- looking businessmen and diplomats; as many people as animals; as many formal occasions as sexually explicit positions.

He is a storyteller with a solid command over his stream of visual consciousness. He draws and paints people and then formally and ceremoniously cuts them into pieces and shapes and designs. He loves to pile people and animals and body organs on top of each other irreverently and provocatively. He paints as if he were an old-fashioned pardeh-dar storyteller, reciting old stories of heroes off a canvas, though his attention span is punctuated and interrupted by the urgency, immediacy, obscenity, and schizophrenic absurdity of the tales he wishes to tell.

Iranian artists' NYC enclave  

Born, raised, and having come to aesthetic consciousness and artistic fame in Iran, Nikzad (Nicky) Nodjoumi was a virtuoso painter long before he packed his belongings and moved to New York. He began to cultivate a distinct artistic signature in his homeland with a visual audacity that was globally resonant long before he came upon greener pastures.

In New York he and a few other Iranian artists - notably his close friends, the preeminent Iranian filmmaker Amir Naderi, the late virtuoso Ardeshir Mohassess, and the globally celebrated Shirin Neshat, become central to the expatriate community of artists who now called New York home. The term exile is a deeply misleading term in this case. Yes these artists, whose invisible enclave includes the pioneering figures of Manouchehr Yektai and Siah Armajani, have been forced to leave their homeland against their will, but the term "exile" also casts them in a nativist disposition that is entirely alien to their work.

Artists like Nodjoumi were worldly when they were in Iran - and they are worldly now that they are in New York. The aesthetic result of this historical fact is the formation of a palpable trans-social signature that defines each and every one of their multiple and varied work. There was as much New York in Nodjoumi when he lived and worked in Iran, as there is Tehran in him now that he lives and works in New York.

There is no difference in this regard among the works of Nodjoumi, Yektai, Neshat, Mohassess, and Naderi. They are as much Iranian as they are American - and that fact categorically dismantles the binary politics of location that habitually exhibits them in one or another curatorial context. The advantage of a solo exhibition of Nodjoumi at Taymour Grahne Gallery is precisely the singular opportunity for this innate quality of the work to come out effectively without the imposition of continued curatorial practices of group exhibitions of one sort or another that keep regurgitating stale and mothballed notions of Eurocentric or (even worse) "parallel" "modernism" ad absurdum.

Understanding contemporary art requires a complete and categorical abandoning of the innately exoticising curatorial practice of the flawed ethnographic gaze that informs much of contemporary art exhibitions and criticism, when it begins and ends (in confirmation or negation) with the designation of an even more flawed category of "Western/non-Western" dichotomy. The politics of location that informs any work of contemporary art must come to terms with the border-crossing fact of all art as it has happened anywhere in the world, effectively imagining a liberation geography constitutionally transgressive against every and all borders. Nicky Nodjoumi's art is a living example of this claim.


Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University in New York, and the author of the world of Persian literary humanism (2012).

Via Al Jazeera

Art meets Politics: Iranian Revolution poster art on display

by Kyle Sherard, Mountain Xpress


There are roughly 200 connections between Asheville and the Iranian Revolution of 1979. No, really. It just so happens that one of the largest privately held collections of posters from the Iranian Revolution, nearly 200 in number, resides here in Asheville.

For the next two months, 146 of these posters are on view as part of In Search of Lost Causes: Images of the Iranian Revolution: Paradox, Propaganda and Persuasion, a multi-institutional exhibition series and program, showing at three institutions across Asheville.

Thirty posters hang in UNCA’s Ramsey Library, 10 line the walls of Firestorm Cafe and Books and the remaining 106 fill up two floors in the Phil Mechanic Studios’ Flood and Courtyard Gallery in the River Arts District.

The weekend-long schedule begins at UNCA on Friday, Oct. 17, with an opening reception, film screening and lecture by Dr. Dabashi, an Iranian-born scholar, cultural historian and the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Using a N.C. Humanities Council grant, Dabashi traveled to Asheville to co-curate the exhibitions with Steward, and give a series of lectures and presentations on the collection’s historical and contemporary significance.

The collection belongs to Carlos Steward and Cynthia Potter, who operate the Courtyard Gallery in the Phil Mechanic Studios. They received the posters in 1999 as a gift from a source they will not disclose. Dabashi believes the donor was heavily involved in the inner-workings of the revolution, which took place between 1977 and 1979.

The posters span from the Revolution’s build-up in post-coup, 1960s Iran to the height of the Revolution to the aftermath in the early '80s.

They come in every shade imaginable, though black and red are dominant. Thick text runs throughout many pieces, appearing in [Persian], French and English, among others. Most of the posters feature a cast of heroes and villains that include pre- and post-revolution governmental officials, individuals, and groups of activists and laborers. The pictures depict individuals who are wounded, dead or dying — both innocent and guilty. Some wield AK-47s, others pray.

Several works celebrate music and working-class peasantry, while some criticize U.S. involvement in the 1953 coup that ultimately set the Revolution in motion. Still others contain bold designs wrapped around thick [Persian] script.

“They’re the perfect marriage of art and politics,” says Mark Gibney, a professor of political science at UNCA who helped anchor the exhibition.

Dabashi describes the collection as a socially and politically comprehensive view of the Iranian Revolution. It’s a museum in and of itself, he said, “one of a national revolutionary consciousness — a cataclysmic event that included millions of millions of people.”

Steward initially contacted Dabashi, via email, in June 2010 after reading his book Staging a Revolution. The book had information on the Revolution’s graphic and artistic works, Steward says, “and a lot of them were similar to these posters.”

Steward’s message was short and direct, according to Dabashi: He had nearly 200 posters from the Revolution — was Dabashi interested in looking at them?

Dabashi admitted that he was initially hesitant to jump into the matter. He and Peter Chelkowski, a colleague from NYU, had spent years amassing similar imagery from the revolution. They compiled the imagery and wrote “Staging a Revolution,” which cataloged evidence from all sides of the movement, rather than taking a one-sided approach. This allowed for a fully-documented picture and a greater conceptual view of the Iranian Revolution.

“I did the book,” Dabashi says, “and I thought it was out of my system.”

Neither Dabashi nor Chelkowski had come across such a large collection of ephemera, posters specifically, in such pristine shape. “They were all in mint condition,” he says, “and I thought, how do you have these in Asheville, North Carolina?”

“Streets and lamp posts,” Dabashi says, “that’s where these things belonged.” In other words, the posters should be ragged and full of staples, nails and tack holes, not in the flawless, fresh-pressed condition of Steward and Potter’s Collection. Either that or they would've been trashed decades ago.

“The posters [are] remarkably representative of the Revolution,” he says. “It’s proof that the Revolution wasn’t from just one ideology.” Instead, there were many factions working together to overthrow an oppressive power.

And these posters didn’t just come from Tehran, he notes. They were made in all regions of Iran and from surrounding countries. They hailed from Israel to Eastern Europe, India to London and even Salt Lake City. “Anywhere where there were Iranian students, they came together,” he explains.

The collection’s geographical and ideological differences are further proof of the movement’s breadth.

The artists and the revolutionaries saw their cause in other movements, Dabashi says. They promoted movements from all over the globe: women’s rights in the Middle East, Palestinian exile and even the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. One poster features an outstretched Iranian arm beside a similarly-posed black arm, both in protest and clad in broken shackles.

According to Dabashi, the collection has universal themes. “They carry ... a relation to any movement or ideological revolution,” he says. And because of that, they draw us into comparing them to the present. “What about now?” he says. “What about us?” They encompass the past and inform the present, he says.

Dabashi no longer looks at such collections as stagnate or placeholders of an era. Rather, these collections carry contemporary weight. “It’s a way to touch base,” he says, “to revive the cosmopolitan disposition.”

The lineage of all of the work that formed Staging a Revolution is buried in Stanford University’s archives, says to Dabashi. “It’s collecting dust.”

Such is the fate of many similar academic endeavors. But Dabashi and Steward plan to keep the posters and photographs in motion. They’ll travel from Asheville to Los Angeles, then New York before heading overseas.

During the question and answer session, several attendees noted the shift in media presentation, asking if the digital age had snuffed out print media’s representation in the modern revolutionary landscape.

“I’m neither antiquarian, nor beholden,” he said of the posters’ vintaged, material physicality. “The fact is, the digital age is no joke. It has traction, both negative and positive.” The immediacy and global reach of such social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, he says, is powerful, immense — unstoppable even.

“We must be aware of the material significance,” he said, adding, “but the ideals are the same, only the technology has changed.”

In Search of Lost Causes is on view at UNCA’s Ramsey Library through Wednesday, Oct. 30, the Flood Gallery through Friday, Nov. 29 and Firestorm Cafe through late November. An opening reception will be held at the Flood Gallery on Friday, Oct. 18, from 6-8 p.m. At 8 p.m., the Courtyard Gallery will be screening Chicken with Plums on the top floor of the Phil Mechanic Studios. On Saturday, Oct. 19, Firestorm Cafe and Books will have an opening reception from 7-9 p.m. The evening will feature a brief presentation and book signing by Dr. Dabashi. The events are free to attend. Exhibition catalogs are available for purchase at all locations.


The complete poster exhibition can be seen online at: Posters

See also: Filthy Hippies coming to see Iranian Poster Exhibition from the Iranian Revolution



Via Mountain Xpress

Incisive exhibition reveals range of Iranian modern art

Iran Modern exhibit spans three decades leading to the 1979 Revolution

Parviz Tanavoli’s mixed media composition, “Innovation in Art” (1964) consists of a Persian carpet adorned with hand painted Islamic motifs and a jug (used in toilets in lieu of bidets) inserted in the centre. From the Iran Modern exhibition, courtesy Asia Society and Guardian.

by Shadi Harouni for the Tehran Bureau, Guardian

I went to see Iran Modern with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. On the one hand, I was eager for the chance to see the works, many of which have been hidden away for decades; on the other, I had the sour memory of past exhibitions curated through a western orientalist lens. This unprecedented display of Iranian art from the 1950s up to the Revolution of 1979, on view at Asia Society in New York, brings together works from private and public collections around the world, including the Andy Warhol Foundation, New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and the Mathaf in Doha, Qatar. From the first pieces I encountered, I sensed that this was to be no exotic narrative of Iranian modernism meant for a western market. The quality of curation and scholarship involved has produced an exciting and valuable exhibition.

At first, I found myself playing the comparison game, looking at the dates on the labels to see how the works stacked up against their western counterparts. Who influenced Manoucher Yektai to use such heavy impasto in the 1950s? Do Marcos Grigorian's earthworks of the 1960s precede or follow those of Robert Smithson? The game can continue down to the year and even the month, but it is senseless and soon tiresome. And, thankfully, it is hardly the point of the exhibition. Indeed, many of the works, especially those in the distinctly Iranian Saqqakhaneh style, well represented, do not have European counterparts. The show soon takes you out of comparison mode and into richer considerations.

Bringing together more than a hundred pieces by 26 artists, Iran Modern makes clear that despite common threads, Iranian modernism is pluralist in practice. Standing before some of the works, decades after they were conceived, I could easily imagine a performer skipping by, singing Tino Sehgal's catchy tune: "Oh, this is so contemporary, contemporary, contemporary." The questions of what appears "contemporary" and what the appellation signifies become particularly thorny when the works hail from a culture conceived of as "other"; as stand-ins here, "fresh" and "relevant" will serve for much of the art on view in Iran Modern.

Monir Shahroudi Farmanfarmaian (b. 1924), whose mirror painting Untitled (1977) appears on the exhibition catalogue's cover, continues a prolific, internationally recognized career. Her work, inspired by the traditional, highly decorative architecture of Iranian shrines and palaces, blurs the lines between painting, sculpture, architecture, craft, and pop culture. Her use of mirrors is echoed in the sculptures of young American artists such as Rashid Johnson.

A Number Between Zero and One (1970), by Siah Armajani (b. 1939), is an elegant steel tower holding a nearly nine-foot stack of papers printed by computer. The work – which was shown in Information, an important exhibition of conceptual art held at MoMA in 1970 – is relevant to contemporary practices in its employment of alternative materials and (like Armajani's drawings) elusive narratives.

Parviz Tanavoli's (b. 1937) sculptures Innovation in Art and The Poet and the Beloved King (Lovers), both from 1964, are the exhibition's most memorable surprises. Lovers refers to the epic Iranian tale of the love triangle between Shirin, the sculptor Farhad, and Khosrow, the king. Its two oversized, brightly painted Lego-like robot figures speak of legend and poetry, power and play, humor and sexuality. A lit sign, reminiscent of those on the tops of old Iranian cabs, takes the place of the larger robot's mouth. It reads in Farsi, "Does anyone open the gates to anyone else?" The word "lemon" written on a yellow circle suggests breasts on the smaller figure, while a large arrow pointing upward from where a robot penis would be yields an ambiguous sexuality. I found it difficult to walk away from Tanavoli's lovers.

Unlike me, Iran Modern has not picked favorites. More importantly, the exhibition does not attempt to define Iranian modernism as a singular style. Co-curator Fereshteh Daftari writes in her catalogue essay, "The landscape of diversity during this time period, with its disparity of individual experiences, should prevent homogenizing perceptions of a monolithic modernism that is exotically 'other,' hermetically sealed, and consistently in tune with local agendas or foreign preconceptions." She makes the case for a complex "notion of Iranian art and identity, which has not always been in conflict with the West, nor synonymous with Islam, miniature painting, calligraphy, or the veil."

The works in the exhibition all express a need to forge an artistic identity that is perhaps Iranian, but more certainly personal. The country in which the respective artists were educated – whether Iran, France, Italy, or the US – and their subsequent itineraries have clearly played important roles in their development.

In the years leading up to the 1979 revolution, there was substantial government support for artists' travels and studies abroad. Despite considerable censorship and the constant threat posed by the SAVAK, the Shah's brutal secret police, the Pahlavis were enthusiastic about the arts. Among Queen Farah's accomplishments were the founding of Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art and the acquisition of what has been called the most significant collection of modern art outside of Europe and the US. The collection has been largely locked away since the revolution, much of it deemed too un-Islamic for public viewing.

Last year at the Museum of Modern Art in Tehran, I had the rare opportunity to see some of the collection in a show, Pop Art & Op Art, featuring works by Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and David Hockney, among others. I had to gasp before a series of Andy Warhol's portraits of Mao Zedong. I was surprised not by their current display but by their original acquisition, at a time when the SAVAK was rounding up Iranian Maoists for imprisonment and execution.

Iran Modern does not and cannot deny the political tensions and turmoil of the period to which it looks. Though only a handful of the works on display are directly political (in particular, paintings by Nicky Nodjoumi never before shown publicly, one depicting a group of SAVAK agents dragging a prisoner, another inspired by the execution of Khosrow Golsorkhi, a Marxist militant), an air of surveillance and repression still fills some of the rooms.

Perhaps this is why Iran Modern does not feel tediously nostalgic, romanticizing the past to the point of condemning the present. Perhaps this is why the exhibition can inspire a viewer simultaneously to look back while seeing forward. Iranian artists have had and can continue to have their own distinct character, some demonstrating a formal and conceptual sophistication on a par with their colleagues around the world, no matter the political climate at home, then or now.

Iranian contemporary art must be held to high standards and its practitioners not patronized, so that relevant and challenging works – as opposed to thinned-out copies – may be promoted internationally. Iran Modern is a great argument against lazy curatorial practices, promoting a more critical approach to art coming out of Iran and the diaspora. With so many noteworthy Iranian artists working throughout the world, this exhibition does an essential service in documenting a lineage that belongs as much to them as to the rest of art history.


Iran Modern is on view at New York's Asia Society through January 5, 2014.


Via Guardian

Contemporary Iranian art speaks from the heart

Masoumeh Mozafari, ‘Heat stroke’, 100x100cm, Acrylic on Canvas, 2011. Courtesy of the artist and {al.arte.magazine}.

by Aya Johanna Daniëlle Dürst Britt, {al.arte.magazine}

During World War II, the third floor of the building at Herengracht 401 in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam hid a number of German Jewish artists behind its facade. Today the post-war art venue Castrum Peregrini, which was founded subsequently, offers a temporary shelter to the contemporary artwork of over twenty Iranian artists carefully curated by Shaheen Merali. The latter titled the current collection of graphics, photographs, paintings and various installations ‘Speaking from the heart – The polemic sensibility from Iran’.

According to the internationally acclaimed artist Mehraneh Atashi (1980), this title somewhat unnecessarily replaces an earlier one. Atashi is among the twenty-three Iranian artists who already participated in the earlier though differently titled exhibition also curated by Merali, at the Freies Museum in Berlin in 2011. The only difference in the line-up is Reza Abedini, the famous graphic designer and artistic director of the Azad Art Gallery. He designed the poster accompanying the present exhibition and replaced late fellow artist Farideh Lashaei (1944-2013) in ‘Speaking from the heart’.

Aesthetic opposition

The Azad Art Gallery in Tehran is an initiative run by the artists listed at the bottom of this article, who are all taking part in the Amsterdam exhibition. The Azad Art Gallery exhibits artwork for a maximum of two weeks: a time-span long enough for the public to pay a visit, but usually short enough not to arouse the suspicion or repercussions of the regime. After the Iranian elections of 2009 gave birth to a series of events generally referred to as the ‘Green Movement’ (which originated a year ahead of the wave of uprisings in the Middle East dubbed the ‘Arab Spring’), Iranian artists found their social work space often confined to the borders of the city, or, in some cases, even limited to the confines of their homes. Their personal experience of gross human rights violations and immense social distress is a prominent and confronting feature in most of their works.

In the work of Mehraneh Atashi this is less visible. I asked her what message or image she intends to convey with her work. Atashi: “Imagine your home as a resistance space in a city that seems to equal a state, where there is always a possibility of conflict. Still, you can transform the conflict into something new, something fruitful, by translating it into art. Art is not about the story itself: there is always a story, a history. In my view, what matters is the way in which the story is told: the storytelling.” Four pictures of her series ‘Hanging garden’ (2010-2011) are featured in ‘Speaking from the heart’. Using a water tank to create these shots, Atashi used the tranquil transparency and fluidity of the water to break the light and reflect the imagery of the fixed and vexed city Tehran.

Mehraneh Atashi, ‘Hanging Garden’ series, 60x80cm, (3, 2010-2011). Courtesy of the artist and {al.arte.magazine}.

Art as a language

The exhibition came into being as a result of the cooperation between various parties and the funding by two separate subsidies. The initiator and co-organiser of ‘Speaking from the heart’ is Framer Framed, a Dutch “initiative to discuss the politics of representation and curatorial practices in the 21st century”. Framer Framed noticed the Berlin exhibition and subsequently endeavoured to bring it to The Netherlands, where Castrum Peregrini proved the most suitable venue. The intriguing past of this venue, interwoven with that of its charismatic founder and artist in residence Gisèle d’Ailly van Waterschoot van der Gracht (1912-2013), certainly adds meaning and poignancy to ‘Speaking from the heart’. This title was chosen by Merali and Framer Framed with regard to the differing Dutch context.

It is interesting to see how the organisations involved joined hands with curator Merali to allow the current exhibition to literally ‘speak’ for itself. Merali: “Local conditions determine the possibilities of the artists to mediate their work and their views. I am passionate about curating regionally, as this offers possibilities to exhibit what otherwise remains local knowledge. I hope it clarifies what remains still a starting point for further conversations about art as a language, instead of as about a group of objects. In the works at display in ‘Speaking from the heart’ it’s not the intellect speaking, but the heart. And the heart is universally associated with both love and pain – with blood, beating through the heart, and with bloodshed, death, loss.”

Farhad Fozouni – TEHRAN (poster print). Courtesy of the artist and {al.arte.magazine}.

Scholarly precision and cold-blooded graphics mark the works of poet and graphical artist Farhad Fozouni (1979). In a different, map-like work, Fozouni laid out the province of Tehran in bloody red, its borders figuratively blurry in the northwest, cut razor-sharp in the southeast. He sprinkled certain spots with poetical musings in Persian and connected them with lines, both in white. Reza Abedini explained the words to me as diary-like fragments; tiny contemporary odes some of which are as intimate of tone as if being addressed to a lover. Viewing Fozouni’s work, I realise how much I would have appreciated an accompanying catalogue offering a translation of the Persian words which Fozouni included. Now, I feel dumb in a way: I can’t grasp the meaning of what the words convey, nor does Reza’s explanation sufficiently satisfy my hunger to understand the work. Still, the graphics of Fozouni’s somewhat macabre ‘Kitchen Poetry’ leave ample room for speculation.

Farhad Fozouni, 21x33.5cm, 2010 (digital print from same series as ‘Kitchen Poetry’). Courtesy of the artist and {al.arte.magazine}.

Curating Iran in The Netherlands

How does one curate a country irreversibly re-awakening to democratic reform, that has been entangled in violent socio-religious constraints for so long? Well, with care. Merali opted for an outside the box approach – at least outside the general Western frame of reference which usually either involves some stereotypical links to Persia’s eclectic past of Mughal art, king stories and Sufi poetry, or explicitly refers to its peculiar religious-political situation in the region ever since 1979. Two explicit video installations plainly offer painful food for thought, whereas other works communicate a bitter sense of humour. Some of the works included in the exhibition have to be ‘discovered’, like a series of framed photographs obviously recovered from shredded photos depicting people who got wounded during demonstrations, shown behind wire gauze in a tiny dark room.

Although ‘Speaking from the heart’ reveals only a tip of the immense contemporary Iranian art iceberg, Merali succeeded in presenting a fair and wide variety of politicised Iranian art more than worthwhile viewing. Moreover, until the finissage on November 9, Castrum Peregrini hosts a variety of activities related to this remarkable exhibition every Tuesday evening.

‘Speaking from the heart – The polemic sensibility from Iran’ - 27 September to 9 November 2013, Castrum Peregrini, Herengracht 401, 1017 BP, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The venue is open Wednesdays to Fridays 14.00–18.00.

Participating artists:

Mehraneh Atashi, Navid Azimi Sajadi, Mahmood Bakhshi, Masoumeh Bakhtiary, Majid Fathizadeh, Parastou Forouhar, Farhad Fozouni, Ghazaleh Hedayat, Taha Heydary, Melodi Hosainzadeh, Katayoun Karami, Aria Kasaei, Majid Korang Beheshti, Azadeh Madani, Amir Mobed, Mehran Mohajer, Masoumeh Mozafari, Homan Nobakht, Sara Roohisefat, Atefeh Samaei, Rozita Sharafjahan, Mohamad M. Tabatabaei, Reza Abedini.

Via {al.arte.magazine}

My Wicked Persian Carpet

Taymour Grahne Gallery to Present Reza Derakshani's ‘My Wicked Persian Carpet’, 10/29-12/3   

by Visual Arts News Desk, Broadway World

Following its much-touted launch in September 2013, Taymour Grahne Gallery presents new works by Iranian painter, musician and performance artist Reza Derakshani. Expanding on previous investigations of ornamentation and abstraction, "My Wicked Persian Carpet" incorporates the artist's newfound experimentation with materials such as glitter to consider ongoing themes of life and death, faith and fear, love and revulsion, beauty and viciousness, light and darkness. Flat colorfields and a lack of perspective, always a signature component of Derakshani's compositions, meld tradition and political references into highly textured, jewel-like paintings. The series derives its raw strength from an uncomfortable contrast-deceptively beautiful, almost hedonistic decorative qualities cut with bleak, apocalyptic manifestations of death-a result that is hypnotically and universally unsettling.

Born in the rustic countryside of Sangsar, Iran, Derakshani's detailed observation of the natural world is apparent in his work, as is his inspiration from Persian art and folkloric traditions; the imagery of gardens, epics, and miniatures is a critical part of his visual narrative. After leaving Iran in the aftermath of the revolution, Derakshani incorporated influences of Western modernist painting and Persian motifs to develop a visual language of his own, which richly and often piercingly addresses the challenges of calling multiple places home, and the complexity and trauma of modern Iranian cultural history.

This latest series was motivated by Derakshani's return to his native country, where, disappointed by what he saw after decades living overseas, a commentary on the state of Iran today has manifested itself in "My Wicked Persian Carpet." However, as Scott Indrisek writes in his essay accompanying the exhibition catalog: "Defining Derakshani as a political painter would be reductive-shrinking his oeuvre into little more than an extended, anguished salvo against a regime-and it's more interesting to note the unavoidable ways that such concrete realities are instead ingested, and transformed, by the artist."

This is echoed by Derakshani himself, who explains: "I've long tried to steer clear of politics, but it's always been there in the background, and I see the Persian carpet as a symbol of Iran itself. It is something that Persians are proud of, a traditional art that can be absolutely magnificent, yet perhaps we hide behind these traditional symbols. We have huge problems in Iran which we need to face." Nowhere is this more evident than in the work from which the exhibition derives its name: a grinning blue skull stares at the viewer, floating on a thickly layered reworking of the familiar pattern of Persian carpets. Others, such as My Lovely Nuked Red Carpet (2013) continue the theme; the patterns more are subtle, yet through a pixelated haze the rich purple mushroom cloud of a sparkling nuclear reaction takes centre stage, dominating the canvas.

Skulls are at the forefront here, a leitmotif in this series, although they have made prior appearances in Derakshani's work. Works such as Searching for God! (2013) and A Rainbow for Every Life (2013) isolate this memento mori, a macabre reminder of our own mortality suspended in a shimmering sea. And yet, for Derakshani, rather like the Mexican Day of the Dead, there is as much celebration in these skulls as there is a reminder of our own fragility, the cycle of life and death. "By adding glitter, in a way, it makes these skulls beautiful," says Derakshani, "it brings them to life and turns them into a celebration, an affirmation of life."

In the lower gallery, Derakshani will present a series of smaller works inspired by Persian miniatures. Traditional manuscript illustrations have been an obsession of Derakshani's since the late 1980's, and this latest body of work leans further towards abstraction. With disjointed-almost hallucinatory-figures figures and coded hints towards an underlying narrative, the paintings present a fractured retelling of the beloved tragic love story of Shirin and Farhad or the epic Shahnameh, while simultaneously echoing more recent incidents of violence, political upheaval, and social dislocation.


Via Broadway World

Iranians turn to art as a weapon for survival

A photo of the Rain series, by Abbas Kiarostami. Courtesy of the artist.

by Salman Siddiqui, Gulf times

Despite strict censorship and a regime considered oppressive by the Western world, internationally acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami believes that art and culture is flourishing in his part of the world.

The filmmaker is in town as part of an invitation extended by the Doha Film Institute, which is presenting a  programme of Kiarostami’s early works, documentaries and award-winning feature films including Taste of Cherry (1997) and The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) at the Museum of Islamic Art from  September 13 to 21.

In an interview with Gulf Times yesterday, Kiarostami said that “people [in Iran] are all turning to art as a shelter; as a weapon for survival. This is the only choice that they have in order to be able to undergo and overcome the social and political pressures.”

He said that if one looked at the history of Iran, one would observe that whenever there had been political repression, art production gained strength and quality. “This is what you can see in Iran today also. These days everybody takes calligraphic and painting classes.”

In his opinion, there was no doubt that Iranian cinema was flourishing. He said there was very little part of it which was seen by the world abroad. “There is this big unknown part of it which is made outside of the great cities, out of small budget, sometimes using just only mobile phone cameras. We are witness of a growth of creativity and development of Iranian cinema.”

According to him, the background of this art expression is the poetry that is part of Iranian culture.  Also, he recalled that when the Lumière brothers invented the first camera, Iran’s king went to France six years later and brought the camera to his court . “That’s the reason why there are some Iranian films that are more than a 100 years old.”

He said there were two possible reactions to censorship. Either you let it destroy you or an artist becomes more imaginative in finding ways to circumvent it.

About his experience of freedom in Iran, he said: “Total freedom is something I’ve never felt. But I never expected it either. How can I imagine having total freedom in the Iranian situation to make the films I want to?”

But at the same time for every single film and piece of art he created, he said that he never felt restricted either because he said he ‘predesigned’ his films in such a way that they could escape censorship.

Interestingly, the filmmaker said that none of his films were inspired by literature or other cinema or books. “It’s always been inspired by either my own experience of life or people around me and the stories they’ve told me. My inspiration for films is life itself. I’m like collecting pieces from real life and showing them on film,” he said.

Kiarostami has been an active filmmaker since 1970 directing over forty films, including shorts and documentaries. He attained critical acclaim for directing the Koker Trilogy (1987–94), Close-Up (1990), Taste of Cherry (1997), and The Wind Will Carry Us (1999).

Censorship and hardship in filmmaking also made Kiarostami go abroad and experience filmmaking in a different culture and a different language. In his recent films, Certified Copy (2010) and Like Someone in Love (2012), he filmed for the first time outside Iran, in France and Japan, respectively.


Via Gulf times

Written On The Body/ Politics Of Poetry: Iranian Artists & The Power Of Script

Pt 2, Mixed Bag Mag

Curator Sanaz Mazinani’s show The Third Space is wrapping up this weekend at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre. Mixed Bag Mag caught up with this busy and multi-talented woman whose career as an artist, educator and curator has her bifurcating herself between Toronto and San Francisco. In the second part (read Part 1 here) of Mixed Bag Mag’s look into the work of contemporary Iranian art Sanaz offers historical background to the contemporary foreground of some of the work included The Third Space and the symbolic and visual power of script.

Avestaaee Script

The History of Calligraphy in Persia

Persian Calligraphy has had a significant effect on the enhancement of Persian arts and culture. The various Iranian Calligraphic styles, such as Taliq, Nastaliq, Naskh, Thulth, Reqa, Towqi, Shekasteh, and Kufic each carry with them an emblem of an era of history. These decorative scripts allow the reader to visually enjoy the composition of the word, in a wholly new way, providing the viewer with multiple levels of engagement with the work of art.

Artist Gita Hashemi‘s Book of Illuminations.

 

Contemporary use of calligraphy by Iranian artists

Many Iranian artists find inspiration in the traditional forms of Persian Calligraphy. However, few are able to successfully marry the traditional forms of calligraphy with a contemporary voice in new and successful ways. One of these artists is Gita Hashemi, whose recent project “The Book of Illuminations” is featured in “The Third Space” exhibition. In this work Hashemi explores the intersection between politics and the personal through calligraphic representations of culturally charged words. Her calligraphy paintings do not merely render poetic verses, but aim to unpack the meaning behind words that we use on a daily basis to symbolically question cultural in-tolerances. One example uses the word “غربتی” which is a derogatory term that comes from the root word “غربت” and means the longing for one’s homeland. But used as an offensive term, it takes on a new meaning and refers to that person as someone who does not belong, and does not fit into the norm. These terms shown here in proximity to the personal narration of the artist’s life writing speak to the expectations placed on us and the limitations of societal benchmarks. Hashemi’s The Book of Illuminations is a fresh approach to the long tradition of calligraphy from Iran and uses a feminist perspective to challenge this traditionally male-dominated, decorative practice by inserting the political into the equation.

In another project, Toronto based artist, Sona Safaei, uses the Farsi and English alphabet and essay writing styles  to uncover the differences in the two languages, which intern demonstrate alternative ways of thinking through a subject. Her process often engages with lost meanings in translations, as she questions the possibility of communications across cultures through looking at the self and the feelings associated with otherness. In The Third Space exhibition, Safaei-Sooreh two works respond to the meeting of two languages (English and Farsi). In Alphabet, the viewer finds herself in front of a split screen video as the camera tracks two alphabets being hand written in pencil – one in English, from left to right, and the other in Farsi, from right to left. A dense and textured sound enhances the experience of watching each gesture. The sounds from the left and right videos combine in a seamless collaboration. An amalgamation occurs precisely at the moment when the video loop comes to a close and both sets of alphabets have been written out tin their entirety. This charming momentary union marks an important occurrence, as the English alphabet includes 26 letters and the Persian alphabet 32, this serendipitous synchronicity signals a potential for cohesion of these two cultures. Safaei-Sooreh’s second work titled, Border is a dual channel video installation in which two sets of texts on the subject of art intersect at the corner of a room. The writing disappears on the borderline where adjacent walls meet, creating a unique experience for the viewer, as the piece examines the duality of experiences always at play in transcultural situations.

 Artist Gita Hashemi‘s Book of Illuminations.

 Artist Sona Safaei-Sooreh’s Alphabet.

The Third Space is on at the Harbourfront Centre’s York Quay Gallery. For more information visit the website.

All above images courtesy of curator Sanaz Mazinani and Mixed Bag Mag.


Related Post:
WRITTEN ON THE BODY/ POLITICS OF POETRY: Iranian Artists & the Power of Script Pt 1

Via Mixed Bag Mag