Art Aware

Art Aware is a non-profit-making blog that monitors all that’s interesting in the world of contemporary art, literature and culture in Iran and in the Iranian worldwide diaspora. It is a review and commentary of new exhibitions, events and developments in art media in Iran and in the West. I am a working artist and also an academic art historian. Edited and compiled by Dr Aida Foroutan

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Wednesday, 17 June 2026

Iran Under Siege

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Tehran Diaries: Dispatches from Iran Under Siege . By Raha Nik-Andish. New York: OR Books, 2025, 90pp. by Paul Buhle ,  CounterPunch The tex...
Thursday, 11 June 2026

How an Iranian Designer Questions His Guardians of Faith

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Courtesy PRINT Magazine by Steven Heller , PRINT Magazine Behnam Raeesian is an artist and poster designer from northern Iran, in the Sari,...

Discussing the English Translation of Woodwind Harmony in the Nighttime: An Interview

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A Conversation with Michelle Quay Michelle Quay is a scholar and translator of Persian literature and was the inaugural winner of the Mo Hab...
Thursday, 4 June 2026

Ones to Watch 2025

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Every year, BJP publishes its Ones to Watch issue – their selection of the artists who epitomise the talent and creativity in international ...
Thursday, 28 May 2026

With My Roots

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Art in exile on show at London’s Iranian Contemporary Art Biennale Iran Herself is a Vineyard by Homa Bazrafshan. Courtesy Mall Galleries an...

Architectural Microcosms:

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An Interview with Arash Nassiri Arash Nassiri: ‘A Bug’s Life,’ 2026, installation view at Chisenhale Gallery, London, Co-commissioned by Chi...
Tuesday, 12 May 2026

Refusing to Perform an Identity

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Ahead of his Venice exhibition at the Canadian Pavilion, the artist, Abbas Akhavan , reflected on diasporic distance and withholding as a fo...

“Tarragon”—a short story

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In a wartime childhood shaped by scarcity and ritual, a pair of twins become obsessed with a plant their grandfather cannot grow. Amani Abei...
Wednesday, 6 May 2026

Symbolic accumulation as an act of universal resistance

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Navid Azimi Sajadi at Studio la Linea Verticale Navid Azimi Sajadi, “Untitled”, 2025, carpet, hand-woven wool tapestry with cotton base, 89×...

Inside Iran’s New Sculptural Language of Memory and Desire

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Hanie Rahimian and Shiva Abazariyan are an emerging Iranian artist duo from Mashhad whose collaborative practice spans sculpture, paper mach...
Thursday, 30 April 2026

I Won't Pretend These Missiles Are Stars

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Liz Frances, Publisher at Street Noise Books , sits down with Interviews Editor, Andrew Irvin, to discuss the anonymously produced graphic a...

Diary of a Massacre: Iran, 2026

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This anonymous diary was written during the January 2026 massacre of protesters in Tehran and published anonymously on a diaspora website ri...
Thursday, 16 April 2026

Between Patronage and Rebellion

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The creative disassembly of the Golestan Film Workshop, Iran’s first independent film studio The Crown Jewels of Iran. Still courtesy of Cin...
Wednesday, 8 April 2026

“Infrequencies”

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Kamrooz Aram Breaks Down the Grid Rather than deconstruct Western modernism or reinsert Islamic visual idioms, the artist loosens the grip o...

“Iran After the Fire”—a Speculative Ethnography

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Exhibit of a bombed classroom, in the Islamic Revolution and Holy Defense Museum in Tehran, Iran (photo Matyas Rehak). Courtesy The Markaz R...
Wednesday, 1 April 2026

In “When the Div Came Home,”

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Soheila Kayoud Mixes Whimsy and Macabre The Iranian-born artist’s first solo exhibition at Andrew Rafacz uses mythological creatures to expl...

Bashu, Beyzaie and the Paradox of Iranian Identity

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In 1986, as the Iran – Iraq war raged on, Bahram Beyzaie completed a film that would define his career and challenge Iranian self-image for ...

From the Rooftops of Tehran

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We in Iran own our grief, mourning all by ourselves. Leanne Shapton: Untitled , 2022. Courtesy The New York Review. by Anonymous,  The New Y...
Thursday, 26 March 2026

To Measure the Emotions of Others

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Golnar Adili’s Family Archive Golnar Adili’s work at Smack Mellon, New York, embodies the desire to account for loss through art Golnar Adil...
Thursday, 19 March 2026

All of You

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Installation view: Andisheh Avini: All of You at Martos Gallery, New York, 2026. Courtesy Martos Gallery, Steven Probert Studio and The Bro...
Thursday, 12 March 2026

Iranian Artist Highlights The Long Resistance

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At Ball and Socket Arts. Mahsa Attaran, Sweep It Under the Rug . Courtesy Midbrow.  by  Brian Slattery ,  Midbrow Mahsa Attaran's I Stil...
Thursday, 26 February 2026

Silence Spoken and a Cry in the Dark:

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Bani Khoshnoudi at the Vanishing Point A director considers stills from her latest film as sources of infinite mourning for Iran’s past—and ...

Artist invites public to tune out to tune in, as part of new local exhibition

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Artist Abbas Zahedi on his new artist residency at the Stanley Picker Gallery Photo credit: Valentina Vinciarelli. Courtesy Kingston Courier...
Wednesday, 25 February 2026

90 Works by Ardeshir Mohassess

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LACMA ’ s New Acquisition Ardeshir Mohassess, Census 1 , 1986, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Ardeshir Babaknia, M.D., M.2026.24,...
Thursday, 19 February 2026

Colour Me Beautiful

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Fierce and political, ‘The Chromophiliacs’ explodes like a paint factory demolition. And it’s glorious. Moozhan Ahmadzadegan, Ruth Paul’s Dr...

Islamic Art, Rewritten, The Modern Islamic Artists Reshaping Contemporary Culture

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Maha Malluh, Food for Thought 'Al-Muallaqat', 2014. Courtesy the artist and A&E Magazine. by Nour Jarmakani, A&E Magazine Mo...
Wednesday, 18 February 2026

For Hearts in Exile,

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at Summerhall Arts Edinburgh Taraneh Dana, A Heart in Exile , 2025, stoneware, glaze. Courtesy Summerhall Arts.   by  Omur Sahin Keyif ,  Ar...

Who Can I Dance With?

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From sneaking into underground basements in Tehran [...] to learning to dance with almost no words in Northern California, I had done everyt...
Thursday, 12 February 2026

“to arrive is never to arrive”

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Skyline’s art gallery explores themes of displacement and reclamation Guest artists present ‘to arrive is never to arrive,’ an exhibition ex...

Forbidden Music:

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Iranian Musicians Push Back Against the Islamic Republic A Conversation with TarantisT, Justina, and DJ Ali Pink Issue #74 - The Protest Iss...
Thursday, 5 February 2026

Iranian Artists Keep the Spirit of “Woman, Life, Freedom” Alive

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Over three years after the suspicious death of Jina Mahsa Amini sparked a nationwide protest movement in Iran, artists continue to fuel crea...
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Biography

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Dr Aida Foroutan
Aida Foroutan was trained as a painter and graduated with a BSc in Industrial Design from the Alzahra University of Tehran. She relocated to Sweden in 2000, where she worked in theatre and museum curation and exhibited her paintings in Sweden and Germany. A book of her poetry, Forbidden Peace, was published in Stockholm in 2003. She moved to the UK in 2007 to do her Masters degree in Theatre Studies at the University of Manchester, then a PhD there (2008-12) in Art History, entitled ‘The Reception of Surrealism in Iranian Art and Literature’. She has published a number of scholarly articles for peer-reviewed academic journals and one for a Festschrift. Before the pandemic, she convened a successful international conference ‘Modern Iranian Art and Architecture in the Shadow of the Classical Persian Past’ at the John Rylands Library, Deansgate, Manchester. She currently teaches Persian at the University of Manchester.
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