Iranian artist redefines calligraphy through tradition and innovation

 An Interview

 Korosh Ghazimorad’s work embodies a unique synergy of historical reverence and innovative spirit 

Korosh Ghazimorad, ‘Breathing with Nature,’ 2024. Mixed media on canvas, 120 x 80 cm (47 x 31 in). Photo courtesy of the artist and Global Voices.

by Omid Memarian, Global Voices

In contemporary Iranian art, Korosh Ghazimorad, 55, is a leading artist known for his unique approach to blending traditional calligraphy with modern artistic expressions.

With a degree in wood industry and paper engineering and certifications from Iran’s Calligraphy Association, he has spent decades merging established techniques with innovative forms. 

His work embodies a unique synergy of historical reverence and innovative spirit, as he masterfully blends classical styles with contemporary forms, most notably through the development of the Sarir calligraphy style. As a seasoned educator, he has imparted his knowledge in calligraphy and typography for over 25 years at esteemed institutions, nurturing the next generation of artists.

A commitment to graphic design and art direction marks Ghazimorad’s professional journey. He has played significant roles in various high-circulation newspapers and in curating exhibitions for renowned Iranian artists. His artistic influence extends beyond national borders, with notable works in prestigious public collections, such as the Museum Funf Kontinente in Munich, Germany.

As a board member of the Iranian Graphic Designers’ Association and a jury member for journalism competitions, he has consistently championed originality and artistic design, reinforcing his dedication to elevating visual arts standards in Iran and beyond.

In an interview with Global Voices, Ghazimorad shares insights into his artistic philosophy, exploring the themes of cultural identity and the sensory experience of letters in his work. 

Ali Banisadr’s Fractious Paintings Are a Reflection of Our Turbulent Times

Artnet spoke to the Iran-born artist ahead of his first solo show in Asia at Perrotin Shanghai.

The Fortune Teller, 2024. Courtesy of the artist, Perrotin and Artnet.

by Cathy Fan, Artnet

The moment I stepped into Ali Banisadr’s studio, I was transported from the sounds of cicadas and the heatwave of a New York midsummer into a tranquil but mysterious world. The spacious, partially skylit, white-walled studio was filled with open books, cut-out references from Old Master paintings and frescos, and, of course, the large-scale canvases he’s been working on.

Banisadr’s studio is located in a quiet neighborhood in Brooklyn, where he lives with his family. “I never had about 70 feet of space to step back from and look at the painting from far away, and make decisions,” the 48-year-old Iran-born artist said, explaining how having more physical space has changed the scale of his canvases. “Since I’ve been working here, the work has changed because I’m able to step back and see the whole composition and the details.”

Leila Zelli foregrounds Iranian women’s protest movement at the Toronto Biennial

The artist’s videos and installations reinterpret acts of resistance staged in the streets and on social media

Leila Zelli, Un chant peut traverser l'océan (A chant can cross the ocean), 2023-present. On view at 32 Lisgar as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art, 2024. Co-presented with MOMENTA Biennale de l’image with the support of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. Photography: Toni Hafkenscheid. Courtesy The Art Newspaper.

by Hadani Ditmars, The Art Newspaper

The day that Iranian Canadian artist Leila Zelli installed her works at the Toronto Biennial of Art (until 1 December) was the two-year anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini. “It was a coincidence,” the Montreal-based Zelli tells The Art Newspaper, “or was it?”

The work that Zelli calls “stamp art” is, like much of her recent oeuvre, inspired by the Women Life Freedom movement sparked in Iran and around the world by Amini’s death. As she created the temporary installation on the walls of 32 Lisgar St and Park—one of the main hubs of this year’s Toronto Biennial, whose title is Precarious Joys—she says, “It was moving for me, a mix of joy and frustration. But ultimately, I felt it was an act of resistance.”

Her installation at the biennial is part of an ongoing series called A Chant Can Cross the Ocean, featuring ink and acrylic prints of women removing their headscarves based on social media images and footage of protests, as well as birds as symbols freedom. Painted over two walls connected by a vertical joint, the latest iteration of the series is designed to be walked through, requiring the viewer’s participation. As one passes through the work, the crowds of protesters move with the viewer, who automatically enters the scene.

Maryam Tafakory’s Haunted Iranian Cinema

Maryam Tafakory, راز دل Razeh-del (still), 2024, DCP 2K, colour, 28 min. Courtesy the artist and ArtReview.

by Gelare Khoshgozaran, ArtReview

What makes the experience of watching Tafakory’s avant-garde films so paralysing?

Maryam Tafakory is part of a new generation of Iranian filmmakers who engage the politics of memory through essay-films and experimental cinema. The London-based Iranian artist’s work consists, almost entirely, of archival footage and the meticulous rearrangement of cinematic fragments selected from hundreds of Iranian films made after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Sourced primarily from her personal archive and YouTube, the dissected and reassembled scenes from the movies are later overlaid with anachronistic sounds from the original audio, or deftly scored by contemporary composers (such as Canadian Sarah Davachi in Tafakory’s 2023 film, مست دل Mast-del).

Tafakory employs a queer feminist gaze to emphasise the Iranian government’s codes of modesty and censorship while simultaneously critiquing the limitations of Western feminist film theory – most notably notions of voyeurism that have been prominent since Laura Mulvey’s 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. One of the scenes that best captures this juxtaposition, which Tafakory makes use of in نظربازی Nazarbazi (2022) and مست دل Mast-del, is of the blindfolded soldier in Kamal Tabrizi’s شیدا Sheida. In the 1999 film, an Iran–Iraq War veteran who has temporarily lost his eyesight falls in love with the voice of his nurse Sheida, who awkwardly recites the Quran to him to alleviate his pain and PTSD nightmares: a sinless love affair between a man and a woman in the absence of vision.

Iranian Women Exhibiting Animated Art

Common misconceptions about Iran have prompted two curators to start their new exhibition ‘Iranian Women in Animation’ in Museum Arnhem. This collection confronts the audience with the difficult situation in Iran whilst accentuating and deepening their conceptions of Iranian culture. This exhibition tells various stories of Iranian women with the help of many impressive animations.

Courtesy Museum Arnhem.

by Jet Bierkens & Victor Rikmenspoel, ANS 

The ‘Iranian Women in Animation’ exhibition, curated by Narjes Mohammadi and Nahid Malayeri, contains ten animations that show a manifold of facets and stories, demonstrating the persistence and colourful diversity among Iranian artists. Every animation displays a different personal story that artistically tackles difficult topics, such as domestic violence, dress codes in school and forbidden love. Moreover, the short films, displayed in the white office-like room, contain various styles and subgenres of animation. This allows the viewer to immerse themselves in the world and experiences of Iranian women.

Drawing Freedom:

 Marjane Satrapi and The Voices of  Revolution Through Art and Storytelling

 Courtesy Center For Iranian Diaspora Studies.

by Bahar Momeni, Center For Iranian Diaspora Studies

She throws the paper airplane she had been making while we discuss the interview logistics, saying, “I always make paper airplanes while talking.” The airplane gently flies out of the frame. Relieved, she lights a cigarette and looks at the monitor with bright, curious eyes. “Alright, now I will concentrate. Let’s get started!” she says as she grins. It’s no surprise that this is how the interview begins with Marjane Satrapi, the celebrated Iranian-born French graphic novelist, filmmaker, artist, and one of the most recognized figures within the global Iranian diaspora. Her playful, honest, and adventurously creative spirit is best exemplified in her graphic memoir Persepolis (Pantheon 2003, 2004), which garnered international acclaim for its powerful and compelling depiction of life during and after the 1979 Revolution in Iran. While she’s done so many exciting projects since, this book is what put her style and her vision on the global literary map.

Persepolis (Pantheon). Courtesy Center For Iranian Diaspora Studies.

“Persepolis helped readers understand what’s happened in Iran. I believe graphic novels are such an impactful genre for making this information accessible. Because, even before the alphabet, drawing and painting, it was how humans communicated,” Satrapi says.

Persepolis marked the start of Marjane Satrapi’s influential career in graphic novels, setting the stage for subsequent graphic works such as Embroideries (Pantheon, 2005), Chicken with Plums (Pantheon, 2006), Monsters Are Afraid of the Moon (Bloomsbury, 2006), and The Sigh (Archaia, 2011). Following the immense success of the film adaptation of Persepolis in 2007, Satrapi shifted her focus to filmmaking. Her second feature film, an adaptation of Chicken with Plums in 2011, was another successful collaboration with French filmmaker Vincent Paronnaud. Satrapi’s cinematic journey continued with films such as Gang of the Jotas (2012), The Voices (2014), Radioactive (2019), and her most recent feature, Dear Paris  (2024), exhibiting her versatility and creative evolution across different mediums. After spending recent years focused on filmmaking, Satrapi has returned to her cherished genre, comics, with her latest work, Woman, Life, Freedom. 

‘Everything can just be what it is’:

The liberated art of Nairy Baghramian

The Iran-born sculptor’s colourful new London show continues her practice of playing with convention and collaboration

‘A political experience of a space’ … Misfits by Nairy Baghramian at Marian Goodman Gallery Paris, 2021. Photograph: Rebecca Fanuele. Courtesy The Guardian.

by Dale Berning Sawa, The Guardian

In 2005 or 2006, Nairy Baghramian arrived for a site visit at Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland to find the pioneering artist Gustav Metzger was there, too. He was scheduled to do a show before her and was walking around the imposing space with the director Adam Szymczyk, when he suddenly became excited at a temporary wall that had been erected. “Oh my God!” he exclaimed. “I’m very happy that this is built in now. Otherwise it would be a totally fascist building, it’s huge. I love this unterbrechung”.

An unterbrechung is an interruption or an intermission. Metzger, the Jewish artist and activist who fled to the UK from Nazi Germany as a child in 1939, found the idea of disrupting this example of monumental neoclassical architecture to be politically potent. Baghramian would go on to base her whole show on that sentence. She left most of the space empty, arranging just a few pieces around that wall.

At first Szymczyk questioned the decision: “Do you know how big the space is and you only have these works?” he asked. But she insisted that Metzger’s neat summation of “a political experience of a space and also an architectural experience” was the only prompt she needed.

Baghramian is always looking for openings. For ways of letting the outside in. She was born in Isfahan, Iran, in 1971, and after the revolution fled to Berlin with her family in 1984. She has been exhibiting since the late 1990s, but it was taking part in the once-a-decade Münster Sculpture Project in 2007 that pushed her firmly into the spotlight.

From the outset, she has made her playful, deliciously tactile work in a constant back and forth between photography and sculpture. In her latest show, portraits of a young child sit alongside sculpted elements in stone and metal. It stops her from getting stuck on any one idea: “It keeps my artistic dominance in check, so that nothing becomes too tight and everything can just be what it is.”

Report Details Persistent Persecution of Iranian Artists

Courtesy Artistic Freedom Initiative

DOWLOAD THE REPORT HERE

by Anna Lentchner, ArtAsiaPacific

A new 100-page report by the American advocacy groups Artistic Freedom Initiative (AFI) and Voices Unbound (VU), in partnership with Berkley Law, details how Iranian artists have been systematically targeted in the aftermath of the “Women Life Freedom” movement in 2022, during which time Iranian security forces are believed to have killed more than 500 protestors and arrested more than 19,000.

Titled “I Create; I Resist: Iranian Artists on the Frontline of Social Change,” the report was released on September 10, ahead of the two-year anniversary of Mahsa Jina Amini’s death in Tehran in September 2022. Arrested for wearing an “improper hijab” and later dying in morality-police custody, Amini became a symbol of female oppression and persecution, with demonstrations in her memory ensuing across Iran and worldwide. Iranian cultural figures in the region and the diaspora were particularly active, and graphics, songs, drawings, photographs, and videos—dozens of which are featured in the report—became essential to the movement’s dissemination and sustenance.

According to the AFI’s and the VU’s research, the Iranian regime ramped up its suppression of cultural figures after September 2022, “including through online surveillance, the creation of celebrity task forces, issuing work bans, and threatening legal action.” The report features interviews with several visual artists who fled persecution before or during this time, such as multidisciplinary artists Jinoos Taghizadeh, who remains in exile in Canada, and Nazanin Noroozi, who has been in the United States since 2012 and fears returning to Iran. Noroozi’s mixed-media collages, which appear to integrate photographs of the 2022 protests, are featured on the cover of “I Create; I Resist,” as well as beside its chapter title pages.

Mirza Hamid, the ‘Banksy of Iran’

Image courtesy of UP MAG. 

by Maura Rosner, UP MAG 

Within the city of Tehran, there is an anonymous street artist The Tehran-based Street muralist who goes by the pseudonym Mirza Hamid. To locals, he is known as the “The Banksy of Iran.” in his home country, where his work is well known. Hamid’s identity is unknown. Hamid’s captivating street paintings depict mostly monochromatic conceptual figures painted with red earth pigment, reminiscent of ancient cave paintings. The photographs of these street murals in Tehran (including some that no longer exist because they were painted over by the city) were taken by Morvarid Khalilzad, whose images are works of art themselves. I recently spoke with Hamid, in a first ever interview. He explained that he uses red earth because it is the first pigment that humans used. It can be found in ancient Persian pottery, in paintings in the Grand Canyon and on Egyptian mummies, where it symbolizes life after death. For him, it is the color of humanity. All of humanity is battling the same red-hued sense of estrangement and exile, he said.

Sometimes Hamid finds unmarked walls on busy streets, in ruins, even on government buildings. After painting, a new story begins for that wall, he said. Once, he painted three murals on one of Tehran’s water department’s walls. All three were painted over the next day, but Hamid received a direct message on Instagram that said, “This is the security guard at the water department, I just wanted to say I did everything I could but was not able to convince my colleagues not to cover your paintings, I’m sorry.” Hamid said this was a particularly meaningful moment.

Tehrangeles

Tehrangeles by Porochista Khakpour

New York. Pantheon Books. 2024. 308 pages.

Interview by Basmah Sakrani, CRAFT

In a writing workshop during my undergraduate years in Pakistan, we were asked to share our favorite books and why we liked them. I talked about Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth, and the author’s masterful depiction of diaspora stories, the quiet moments of reckoning about identity and home. And though it’s been nearly fifteen years, the negative reaction of another student has stayed with me. I was met with condescension and derision, classification of South-Asian literature in English by writers living outside of South Asia as “ethnic lit” and “diaspora lit.” There was discussion about how this type of writing did not reflect the true realities of South Asianness and was over-the-top with mentions of mango and monsoons. At the time, I did not possess the clarity of thought to argue back, to posit that the diaspora experience was an indelible part of the South-Asian experience, to assert that literature which illustrated the nuances of those who moved away was as relevant as literature about the ones who stayed. But I believed it deep down, and over the years, that belief has strengthened.

As I read Porochista Khakpour’s Tehrangeles, I thought about that classroom interaction again and again—it made me want to travel back in time and hold up Tehrangeles as proof of diaspora stories that are rich and full and funny and relatable. With the Milanis, Khakpour has created a family of Iranian-American characters who are flawed yet appealing, their imperfections making them as accessible as our own family members. In Roxanna’s hubris and Violet’s irrational sweet tooth, I saw myself. In Haylee’s gullibility, I recognized my fourteen-year-old niece. In Mina’s dedication to justice, I met my sister. In Homa’s retreat away from her boisterous family, I thought of my mother.

“I love the idea that people can change,” Khakpour tells me in this interview, “and I believe in it.” That is her lasting message to her readers, an infectious one that makes me want to believe that the student who decried diaspora fiction all those years ago now understands its importance in the literary canon—one that Khakpour has enriched with this delightful novel.

***

Iranian artist opens Leeds show exploring disability and migration

Paralympian Mohammad Barrangi hopes his work will help people think of human stories behind headlines about migration

Barrangi’s work has a lighthouse motif at its centre, a nod to John Smeaton who is regarded as the father of civil engineering. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian. Courtesy The Guardian. 

by Mark Brown, The Guardian

A decade ago, the artist Mohammad Barrangi was representing Iran as a Paralympic sprinter and was ridiculously speedy. “My best time for the 100 metres was 10.72 seconds, in Tunisia,” he says with understandable pride. “I have friends who don’t believe I’m an artist.”

Barrangi is speaking to the Guardian precisely because he is an artist, about to open a major show in Leeds that shines light on his remarkable story of turning what may seem like adversity into endless possibility.

The show tells a fantastical story of a girl called Lily who sails in a small boat from Anzali, a city on the Caspian Sea in northern Iran, to England.

In his art, Barrangi is also telling a story about himself and his lived experience, exploring themes of disability and migration.

“The Grandest Orphan Cinema”:

Ehsan Khoshbakht on MoMA’s “Iranian Cinema before the Revolution, 1925–1979” Series

Chess of the Wind (1976),  Image courtesy of Filmmaker Magazine.

Interview by René Baharmast in Festivals & Events, Filmmaker Magazine 

Starting with a packed house on the night of October 13 and concluding right after Thanksgiving, MoMA showcased “Iranian Cinema before the Revolution, 1925–1979,” the largest retrospective of Iranian cinema ever held inside or outside of Iran. With close to 70 films covering the pre-revolutionary period, there were works from Iran’s most famous filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami; the most famous film of this era, the late Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cow; and repertory favorites like Ebrahim Golestan’s Brick and Mirror, Bahram Beyzaie’s Downpour and Forough Farrokhzad’s The House is Black. But, significantly, there were also films by lesser-known but just as vital filmmakers such as the Iranian Hitchcock, Armenian-Iranian Samuel Khachikian (Anxiety) and Masoud Kimiai, whose banned and politically censored The Deer had a rare screening as it was intended to be seen. One of Iran’s most popular actors, Parviz Sayyad, had one of his directorial efforts shown, the harrowing Dead End. Sohrab Shahid Saless, the most influential filmmaker of this era, had three films, including the masterpiece Still Life. Filmmakers who were important figures beyond their directorial work, like Bahman Farmanara and Farrokh Ghaffari were also represented. 

Putting this together was quite a feat. To that end, I spoke to the individual most responsible, the co-director of Il Cinema Ritrovata, Ehsan Khoshbakht—who had his documentary about this era, Filmfarsi, also shown in the series—in a wide-ranging conversation to place everything in its proper context. 

Filmmaker: What’s your background and how did it relate to putting this retrospective together?

Khoshbakht: My background in architecture informs what I do. Like a piece of architecture, I always think of the retrospective’s foundation, the main structure, facade, the ornamentations of all the different films, as fading into different architectural prescriptions that I have in mind.

Persian alphabet 'ART IRAN: Falling into Language' group exhibition features work by Iranian artists

The Written Room, a site-specific installation by Parastou Forouhar, will be created in a narrow corridor of the gallery. Acrylic paint. Courtesy of the artist, Craft Contemporary and Artdaily.cc.

by Artdaily.cc

In collaboration with nonprofit Farhang Foundation, a compelling new group exhibition, ART IRAN: Falling into Language, opens at the art museum Craft Contemporary on Jan. 28, 2024 with an artist talk, and runs through May 5.

ART IRAN: Falling into Language presents nine expatriate Iranian artists who engage diverse forms of the Persian alphabet, handwriting, and fragments as an essential part of their artistic practice. This exhibition includes installation works, drawings, collages, site-specific art, and an interactive installation. The methods used range from sewing; assemblages of letters, words, and ceramics; and wall painting.

“The technique of handwriting on objects of different materials, from dishes to architectural tiles, is part of daily life in Iranian culture—and has been throughout history,” notes the exhibit's curation team, Roshanak Ghezelbashand Hoda Rahbarnik.

“The text that appears in ART IRAN: Falling into Language is not necessarily there to be read. It is there to be seen,” explain Ghezelbash and Rahbarnik. “The audience's inability to read these letters captures the in-between state the artists occupy in their daily reality: no longer belonging in their homeland nor in their new home. They chose handwriting over calligraphy— a well-known official expression of the alphabet with a long history within and outside the Iranian art scene; the artists chose handwriting as their voice—to gain a sense of belonging. What they bring with them into this new state of alienation might ultimately be described as a new kind of cosmopolitanism—it belongs to nowhere, so it is at home everywhere.”

For example, The Written Room (pictured above), a site-specific installation by Parastou Forouhar, will be created in a narrow corridor of the gallery. Visitors will feel like they are walking into a room; her handwriting covers the walls, floors, and ceiling with black ink in this entirely white space. The Persian alphabet is presented in a way that may be unreadable even to Iranian readers, but the emotions conveyed in her art are universally understood.

And They Laughed at Me

 Newsha Tavakolian’s images and the scent of roses

Courtesy Collater.al

by Giorgia Massari, Collater.al 

A woman intent on smelling a rose. An image that is repeated seven times in the photo exhibition by Newsha Tavakolian, winner of the first Deloitte and Fondazione Deloitte Photo Grant. On view now Dec. 13 at Mudec Photo in Milan, the Iranian artist’s And They Laughed at Me project is a personal account of the collective history of Iran, a country marked by an oppressive political environment. The project was chosen from nineteen others, proposed by ten expert and international figures contacted by Deloitte and Denis Curti, curator and artistic director of the Grant.

A Revolution on Canvas

Documentary Review (2023)

Sara Nodjoumi delves into the mystery surrounding the disappearance of more than 100 "treasonous" paintings by her father, seminal Iranian modern artist Nickzad Nodjoumi.

Image courtesy RogerEbert.com.

by Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com

Till Schauder and Sara Nodjoumi’s “A Revolution on Canvas” is a smart intersection of the political, personal, and artistic, revealing how all three can be intertwined in a way that makes them impossible to extricate. For Iranian artist Nikzad "Nicky" Nodjoumi, art is always political. And art is always personal. His unshakeable commitment to his beliefs and his need to express those beliefs have made him not only an outcast from his country but also one of its most vital voices. “A Revolution on Canvas” sometimes feels a little light on the concept of “Revolution” regarding form and ambition—it’s a pretty straightforward HBO Doc—but the filmmaking here is empathetic and inspiring. Sometimes, the work of an artist being unpacked by that artist’s relative can lead to bland hagiography, but Nicky’s daughter Sara uses her personal angle to an advantage, never hiding her love and admiration, making it easier for us to feel the same.

True to Self

An Interview 

Arghavan Khosravi On Tension, Circumventing Censorship, and the Protest of Iranian Women

“The Orange Curtain” (2022), acrylic on canvas over shaped wood panel on wood panel, 64 1/2 x 49 inches. Courtesy Arghavan Khosravi and Colossal.

by Grace Ebert, Colossal

For Arghavan Khosravi, obscurity is the point. The Iranian artist (previously) translates the experience of living a dual life—that of immigrating, of presenting differently when at school and at home, and of wanting to deny clear interpretations—into disjointed works that are equally alluring and destabilizing. She’s never proscriptive and offers viewers several entrance points into her narratives, which center around agency, identity, and most recently, the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in protest of Iran’s strict limitations on women and girls.

I visited Khosravi’s solo show, True to Self, at Rachel Uffner Gallery in mid-November, a week after our phone call transcribed below. In addition to her fragmented wall works bound by cord and layered in multiple dimensions, several figurative sculptures congregate at the back of the gallery as a sort of battalion. The women are armored with chainmail and Persian helmets but aren’t militant, instead forming a structural resistance that both demands their right to be seen and invites viewers to stand with them in defiance and solidarity.

Grace Ebert: You have a background in graphic design and illustration, two disciplines rooted in narrative and storytelling. And in the first article we wrote about your work, you say that before you start a new painting, you keep thinking about what you want to say in it. Of course, your background is influential, but why is this narrative component so crucial to your work?

Arghavan Khosravi: I have always been painting on the side in my spare time, but when I came to the U.S. in 2015 to go to grad school and study painting, I wanted a fresh start. I thought that I should forget about all the skills that I learned during those years as a graphic designer and illustrator, and I had to let go of the set of tools that those fields gave me. I started with abstract paintings that were all process-based and more like happenings, accidents, pouring paint, things like that because I thought I’d have to start from the opposite pole in this spectrum. I didn’t have any sort of narrative in my work. 

A new book documents art and resistance in Iran

Woman Life Freedom offers a wide-ranging look at how people have used all kinds of creative means to make their voices heard

Woman Life Freedom by Mina M Jafari. Courtesy Creative Review.

by Megan Williams, Creative Review

One year after the death of Jina Mahsa Amini at the hands of the ‘morality police’ in Iran comes a new book named after the movement that rose up in its wake.

Iranians – led by women and girls – poured out into the streets of cities across each and every province, echoed by satellite demonstrations around the world, as they chanted Zan Zendegi Azadi or Jin Jîyan Azadî, meaning Woman Life Freedom in Persian and Kurdish respectively.

Edited by Malu Halasa, a writer and editor specialising in Middle Eastern art and literature, the new book brings together insightful written accounts of the past year – and the pivotal events of long before – with a broad range of images showing how visual media helped to propagate messages of resistance.

Women of Iran by Or Yogev. Courtesy Creative Review.

The Power of Women by Babak Safari. Courtesy Creative Review.

Social justice movements are often emblematised by evocative, symbolic imagery, and for Woman Life Freedom, the image of a woman removing the hijab – mandatory under Iranian law – became shorthand for the uprising.

In the book, the Iranian Women of Graphic Design (IWofGD) describe the image of cutting hair as “a worldwide symbol of protest against cruelty, injustice and anti-women laws”. The collective runs an extensive online resource making protest visuals – among others – readily available to the masses.

Blinding As a Weapon of Suppression in Iran: Special Report by Mana Neyastami, published in IranWire in March 2023. Courtesy Creative Review.

 

The Persian Rosie by Ghazal Foroutan. Courtesy Creative Review.

Illustration by Jalz of the Azadi (Freedom) Tower with Matisse’s dancers and the protest slogan ‘Women, Life, Freedom’. Courtesy Creative Review.

The book covers mediums that have long provided a canvas for revolution, from posters to graffiti to performance. These examples appear alongside modern-day mechanisms like social media posts, which, according to the book, offer “new, nimble ways to subvert regime censors and internet morality police”. Halasa explains that this mix of tradition and modernity underpins “dissident art” in Iran, which “often blends centuries-old indigenous motifs with contemporary global memes”.

It also examines the various everyday means of expressing resistance: the rare women fashion designers recalibrating dress codes, or the group of mostly women who not only show their hair, but dye it in a spectrum of rainbow hues too.

As art historian Pamela Karimi answers in an enlightening Q&A, “the art of the Woman, Life, Freedom protests operates in informal, tangible and profound ways. Art has become an integral part of everyday life.”

Woman Life Freedom edited by Malu Halasa is published by Saqi Books; saqibooks.com. Courtesy Creative Review.

Via Creative Review

How photography can reveal, overlook and manipulate truth

The fearless work of Australian Iranian artist Hoda Afshar

Hoda Afshar ‘Untitled #88’, from the series ‘Speak the wind’ 2015–22, pigment photographic print, 80 x 100 cm © Hoda Afshar, image courtesy the artist and The Conversation.

by Tom Williams, The Conversation

Through her poetically constructed images, Hoda Afshar illuminates a world overshadowed by history and atrocity. Yet we never see despair: we see defiance, comradeship, reinvention and a search for how photography can activate new ways of thinking.

Afshar was born in Iran and migrated to Australia in 2007. She began her practice as a documentary photographer in Tehran, having originally been attracted to acting.

Staging and creative intervention would become significant features of her work.

Even in her early, nominally “documentary” series, you can sense an embracing of the ambiguity of the still image, and an interest in composing a reality more vivid (and perhaps genuine) than dispassionate reportage might be capable of.

Afshar is now one of Australia’s most significant photo media artists, so it’s a surprise that Hoda Afshar: A Curve is a Broken Line at the Art Gallery of New South Wales is her first major survey exhibition.

What unites her materially diverse work is a concern with visibility: who is denied it, what is made visible by media, and how photography can reveal, overlook and manipulate truth.

How female photographers are making their voices heard in Iran

 

"Imaginary CD Covers," from Newsha Tavakolian's series "Listen," 2010. Courtesy Newsha Tavakolian/Magnum Photos and CNN.

by Zoe Whitfield, CNN

On September 19, 2022, three days after Mahsa Amini died after being sent to a “re-education center” by Iran’s morality police for allegedly infringing the country’s strict dress code, photographer Yalda Moaiery was arrested, beaten and jailed. She had been taking pictures of the resulting protests in the capital Tehran, part of a wider, women-led movement that erupted across the country following 22-year-old Amini’s death.

Moaiery was released on bail in December, reportedly pending a summons to begin a six-year prison sentence on anti-state charges. In January, a video of Moaiery was posted to her social media: dressed in an orange uniform, she sweeps the street and announces her sentence.

Alternative Iran: Contemporary Art and Critical Spatial Practice

An interview with Pamela Karimi

Courtesy Jadaliyya.

Pamela Karimi, Alternative Iran: Contemporary Art and Critical Spatial Practice (Stanford University Press, 2022).

by Jadaliyya

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? 

Pamela Karimi (PK): As an architect, I have always been captivated by the ways in which creative agents navigate diverse spatial environments, whether it be a gallery, a studio, the street, or a deserted urban landscape. However, it was my personal upbringing in Iran that served as the primary impetus for exploring how innovative individuals engage in a cat-and-mouse game with state authorities over spatial boundaries. My formative years in post-revolutionary Iran were marked by clandestine art and music lessons, held in private settings beyond the reach of government or public institutions. But as I delved deeper into investigating such spaces, I came to realize that the notion of a wholly “pure” underground was a misconception. There were, of course, some exceptions. In the 1980s, for example, many art events—especially those featuring Western music or women's vocal performances—were held under entirely covert circumstances. However, the majority of creative—even politically daring—endeavors since the 1990s have occurred in areas that are not entirely hidden but are what I call loosely covert. It is within these interstitial zones, such as dilapidated homes, deserted factories, and abandoned urban locations, that alternative dreams and aspirations unfold. 

In 2010 I read the late Svetlana Boym’s Another Freedom: The Alternative History of an Idea, in which she argues that freedom is not a universal idea, but rather an ever-evolving concept that continues to shape our reality. What made it particularly poignant was the fact that, following the Islamic Revolution of 1979, many outsiders assumed that there was no freedom to be found in Iran. Yet Iranians, despite the odds stacked against them, have always been adept at carving out spaces where they can exercise autonomy.

Although the book primarily focuses on nonconforming curatorial projects, independent guerrilla installations, escapist practices, and tacitly subversive performances, it also features case studies that counterbalance the long-held presumption of a deep divide between the progressive art community and the state. Throughout the book, I identify the power of art to take a critical stance across semi-regulated and unregulated spaces, as well as regimes of appropriation and coalition.

Months of Unrest in Iran Have Made It Even Harder for Artists and Galleries to Thrive.

 Here’s How They Are Still Fighting for Ideas

The protests have brought new hurdles but Iranians are determined to keep the art scene alive.

Installation view, “For Life” at Aaran Gallery in Tehran. Courtesy Artnet News.

by Rebecca Anne Proctor, Artnet News

On November 4 in Tehran, O Gallery owner Orkideh Daroodi bravely reopened her gallery’s doors after one and a half months of intense protests and upheaval following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody.

Reopening the gallery and staging exhibitions was risky during a moment of unrest and violent crackdown from the Iranian government. It was also socially risky. Galleries and many other businesses initially shuttered in solidarity with the protests. When Daroodi announced her reopening on Instagram, she immediately faced backlash from some members of the art scene, who saw the return to business as lacking in solidarity with the protests. Several other galleries that reopened in November without making public announcements faced a similar situation. On the morning of the gallery’s reopening, someone splattered red paint all over the gallery door and steps. The message was clear.

“They accused us of opening at the wrong time. But when is the right time?” Daroodi told Artnet News. “Our opening coincided with the day that many people were on the streets, being killed and imprisoned, and we were cursed endlessly saying that we didn’t care about the lives of the citizens and that all we cared about was money. But in fact by being open we were showing resistance and actually living the woman, life, freedom slogan.”

While Daroodi and other Iranian gallerists have resumed staging exhibitions and selling art, some remain reluctant to hold solo exhibitions due to safety concerns, afraid of provoking the wrath of the protesters as much as attracting the attention of the oppressive Islamic regime.

Iranian artist's surreal paintings of women take on a new sense of urgency

 

Courtesy of the artist/Stems Gallery and CNN.

by Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

For Iranian artist Arghavan Khosravi, depicting hair in her paintings has become charged with emotion. She posted a video on Instagram in early October that showed her sweeping a paintbrush across the canvas to create fine strands. "These days when I'm painting hair, I'm filled with anger and hope. More than ever," she wrote in the caption.

She added the hashtag #MahsaAmini to the post, the name of the 22-year-old woman who died in Iran's capital Tehran in September after being arrested by the country's morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly. Amini's death has since catalyzed nationwide protests — many of which have seen young women and girls defiantly cutting their hair — and her name has become a rallying cry on social media.

Khosravi grew up in a secular Tehran household in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution as a new theocratic regime instated oppressive rules for women, including making the hijab, or headscarf, mandatory in public.

"At a very early age I realized that there is this contrast between your private spaces — your home — and then public spaces. At home you are free to do whatever you want," Khosravi said in a phone call from Stamford, Connecticut. "You learn to navigate this dual life."

Khosravi had her own encounter with the morality police in 2011 and was temporarily detained, she explained. Based in the US since moving in 2015 to study painting, the former graphic designer uses long, flowing hair as a symbol in her metaphor-laden works. Her surreal, dreamlike portraits of women, which appear on multi-paneled surfaces that resemble architectural facades, were influenced by the flattened perspectives and meticulous details of Persian miniature paintings.

The Many Shades of Iran’s Protest Art

In the four decades since the Islamic Revolution, Iranian artists have used clever tactics and unconventional modes of art-making to display disobedience.

Katayoun Karami, Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deed (2013), Azad Art Gallery, Tehran (courtesy the artist and Hyperallergic)

by Pamela Karimi, Hyperallergic 

Recent weeks have seen a surge of protest art in Iran, triggered by the tragic story of Mahsa Amini, a young woman killed on September 16 by the morality police for breaching the Islamic republic’s dress code for women. Since then, civil unrest has grown in more than 80 Iranian cities, with calls for justice as well as personal and political liberties, not to mention hundreds of arrests and violence against protesters, especially young women. Internet access remains limited as the government regulates its usage. 

Amid these protests, artists have played an important role in bringing their message to the fore. Shervin Hajipour’s song (#Baray-e [For the sake of or Because of]), recorded in his room and posted on Instagram for limited followers, was shared more than 40 million times on social media platforms in just two days. Taken from #Baraye protest tweets, Hajipour utters the grievances and hopes of Iranians, with a final emphasis on “For Women, Life, Freedom,” the main slogan of recent protests. 

Art coming out of Iran (or by artists in the diaspora) has a radical and rebellious zeal, also evident in the visual arts. Consider, for example, the work of dozens of Iranian artists — many of whom are women — who have been featured by Hyperallergic and the Guardian. Brave works with layered meanings, they appropriate concepts and imagery from earlier periods, especially those familiar to Iranians. Meysam Azarzad’s posters shared via Instagram seem to have borrowed from revolutionary themes of earlier years — found in both leftist and Islamist factions that helped overthrow the Shah’s regime in 1979. Using red, white, and black, they also seem to align the recent uprising with the visual culture of other global revolutionary movements. A filmmaker with university training in graphic design, Azarzad refutes any link to Iran’s revolutionary posters, especially those with religious iconography. Juxtaposing bold black-and-white silhouettes of fighting and fallen young women with nationalistic poetry, Azarzad instead highlights their bravery in nationalistic terms. The content of the texts appearing above the women strikes a chord with rhyming couplets from the 11th-century epic Shahnameh (“Book of Kings”) by the patriotic poet Abul-Qasem Ferdowsi. One poster shows a defenseless young woman raising her fist — unveiled — to rows of soldiers. The couplet praises a hero, but the typical Shahnameh-style male hero’s name is replaced by “a fighting girl” (dokht-e jangi). The other posters draw our attention to the bravery of two 16-year-old girls. Appearing like saints, Nika Shahkarami and Sarina Esmailzadeh were both beaten to death during protests. The portraits are juxtaposed with poetic lamentations over the death of a heroine, again in the style of Shahnameh.

The Iranian Art Scene

 The Cofounder Of Paris’ First Asian Contemporary Art Fair Speaks About The Iranian Art Scene

Arash Hanaei's works explore the urban issues he has witnessed in Paris since he immigrated to this city. PHOTO COURTESY OF AB-ANBAR GALLERY and Forbes.

Contributor Y-Jean Mun-Delsalle, Forbes

Asia Now, Europe’s first Asian art fair, will return for its 8th edition in Paris from October 20 to 23, 2022, at the same time as Paris+, the first-ever Art Basel fair in the French capital. Welcoming 60 international galleries presenting artists from Asia and its diaspora including Almine Rech, Danysz Gallery, Jeanne Bucher Jaeger, de Sarthe Gallery, The Columns Gallery, Perrotin, Yeo Workshop, Galerie LJ and A2Z Art Gallery, Asia Now is moving from the Right Bank to the Left, to the prestigious Monnaie de Paris, and will continue its exploration of the West and Central Asian art scenes, after its focus on Iran last year. Alexandra Fain, co-founder and director of Asia Now, shares her thoughts on the Iranian art scene.

How would you describe the Iranian contemporary art scene and how has it evolved over the past decade?

I’m not an expert in Iranian art yet the few I know, the more I wanted to discover. Also I can listen to the art market here and what collectors want. And what they were screaming somehow was to learn more about the Iranian art scene. The Iranian contemporary art scene is rich, dense, diverse and, over the past decade, it has certainly moved to become one of the most interesting art scenes in the world. After having challenged themes of revolution and war, it naturally focused on a form of introspection that raises awareness of different issues, such as the environment or gender, through mixed media practices including sound, as we featured this in Tehran Now last year. We naturally gathered some of the most insightful insiders of the Iranian art scene to bring to Paris Tehran Now, a selection of emerging and more established artists coming from Iran.

The Iranian Poet Who Became an American Action Painter

A new book introduces two Manoucher Yektais: the stateless, anti-historical Modernist painter and the poet writing narrative verse exclusively in Farsi [Persian].

Manoucher Yektai, "Tomato Plant" (1959), collection SFMOMA, gift of Louis Honig (© Manoucher Yektai, photo by Katherine Du Tiel). Courtesy Hyperallergic.

by Tim Keane, Hyperallergic

How did the Iranian-born artist Manoucher Yektai — a narrative poet and still-life painter who died in 2019 at the age of 98 — end up lumped in with American Abstract Expressionism and its subspecies, famously termed “action painting”?  

Answers to this question emerge in the biographical and critical essays in Manoucher Yektai (Karma Publications, 2022). Its contributors wrestle awkwardly with these counterproductive art historical labels while setting the record straight about the Iranian-American poet and painter who won critical acclaim among New York’s avant-garde of the 1950s — Harold Rosenberg was a fan, as was Mark Rothko — before Yektai slid out of favor, even as he continued to write poetry and paint well into this century. 

Featuring hundreds of color reproductions of Yektai’s work (he trafficked almost entirely in oil paint on canvas) along with personal photographs from a long life, Karma’s catalogue reveals a painter with a signature style refined across 70 years of disciplined output. Its hallmarks are deeply saturated colors, hyperactive impasto (often applied with a trowel and even a whip), and an all-over picture plane — he routinely painted standing over canvases placed on the floor, producing the illusion of aerial perspectives on the imagery. He applied these strategies to an early phase of pure abstraction and then to buoyant semi-abstract still lifes, developing that repertoire further to include portraiture, interiors, and landscapes. 

Shocking the Bourgeoisie With Iran’s Misunderstood Modernist

The Iranian writer Sadeq Hedayat (1903-51). Courtesy New York Times.

by Amir-Hussein Radjy,  New York Times

In April 1951, the police in Paris called on my great-grandfather, Prince Mohamed-Hussein Firouz, to identify a dead body. It was that of Sadeq Hedayat, who is today eulogized as Iran’s great literary modernist. Days before, Hedayat had sealed up the apartment on Rue Championnet where he was staying and opened up the oven’s gas valve before lying down on the kitchen floor.

In Tehran, Firouz had known Hedayat, the son of aristocrats who moved in the same courtly and literary circles. An army officer who was educated in czarist Russia and fastidious about his dress, Firouz carried a trim mustache and tortoiseshell eyeglasses, and read Le Figaro daily. While men like Firouz easily found their place under Iran’s army-led monarchy, Hedayat did not.

In the early 20th century, Iranians of their class proudly appropriated European culture, wore Sulka cravats and sprinkled their Persian with French expressions — as Hedayat did in letters when describing existentialism in France as démodé, or praising Henry Miller and James Joyce for their originalité. Among the last interloping foreign words of his published Persian letters is psychose. “They diagnosed me with psychosis and granted me leave for two months of recovery in France,” he writes, after a visit to the doctor in Tehran.

“As long as Hedayat was alive no one understood him,” the intellectual Jalal Al-e-Ahmad said of his literary mentor months after Hedayat’s death. “Perhaps no one took him seriously.” Today Hedayat is spoken of not only as Iran’s first modern writer but also, as one critic suggests, the first “modern Iranian” tout court. His biography has become almost entirely entwined with his most famous work, BLIND OWL (Penguin Classics, 87 pp., paper, $14), which arrives in a new English translation this year. Posthumous Persian editions carried a cover with an owl wearing Hedayat’s signature round eyeglasses, or the author’s head growing into the form of the nightbird. Two years after the author’s death, Roger Lescot published a French translation that André Breton praised as a masterpiece of surrealism. The novel, its Parisian publisher said, was “the curse of a dream that creeps into reality.”

Turn our dark night into bright dawn

Reem Kelani's "The Singer Said: Bird of Dawn"

Singer-songwriter Reem Kelani's latest release – "The Singer Said: Bird of Dawn" – pays tribute to Mohammad Reza Shajarian. The two-song EP features Kelani's unique take on a famous Shajarian anthem and a second track symbolic of the iconic Iranian singer's life. 

Palestinian-British singer-songwriter Reem Kelani pays tribute to the great Iranian vocal virtuoso Mohammad-Reza Shajarian (1940-2020): included with her latest release is a detailed and comprehensive trilingual booklet (Arabic, English & Farsi) featuring musicological notes, literary translations and a detailed glossary. The EP forms part of Kelani's ongoing project "This Land is Your Land", focusing on the music of the various communities with whom she lived in Kuwait, and with whom she now lives in the UK. Reem and her international band recorded their parts separately – in the UK and the U.S. – during lockdown in 2021. Courtesy Qantara

by Richard Marcus, Qantara

Outside the Persian diaspora, Mohammad Reza Shajarian is little known. Yet, to Iranians around the world, Shajarian remains one of the most beloved and popular voices ever to have graced their country's music scene. He also carries the distinction of having actively protested against both the Shah of Iran's government and the new post-Islamic Revolution state. He didn't wait for them to ban his songs, either; he simply refused to allow either regime to play recordings of his music on state radio.

The voice of "dust and trash"

As a star of Iran's popular music scene, this was no small matter. A supporter of the Green Movement – a popular uprising that followed the 2009 election, triggered by the conviction that hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole victory from reform candidates for the presidency Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi – he found it hard to stomach what the mullah regime was doing to his people. When President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad subsequently referred to the people protesting against the stolen election as "dust and trash", Shajarian proudly referred to himself as the voice of dust and trash.

"The Singer Said" (Qala al-Mughanni), the opening song, features lyrics penned by Mahmoud Darwish, whom Reem Kelani refers to as the national poet of Palestine. It was chosen for its thematic connection to the life and ethics of Shajarian. The song addresses the struggles of an anonymous singer, making it a fitting choice to represent Kelani's subject.

Graphic design in Iran:

 A journey of evolution and practices shaping the future

A review of the outstanding graphic design studios in Iran whose works are enriched by the country's long visual history and diverse contemporary life.

Morteza Momayez poster designs, right: 1976/ left: 1991. Image: Courtesy of Momayez Foundation and STIRworld.  

by Afra Safa, STIRworld

Delving into contemporary Iranian graphic design is impossible without studying its context first. A civilisation at the crossroads of the East and the West, where cultures collide, Iran has been culturally enriched by both; each ethnicity adding something to this cultural melting pot. Through centuries, this diverse cultural unit has delivered an outstanding visual legacy. Crafts, miniatures and illustrations have left an everlasting impact on the Iranian visual culture, one that is still strongly present today.

Illustrations for the Wonders of Creation by Zakariya al-Qazwini, 1750/ Image: Courtesy of Afra Safa and STIRworld.

Although illustrations and design have always been a part of Persian art and crafts, the dawn of the contemporary Iranian graphic design genius goes back to the 1960s, when in the rapidly reforming country, modern graphic design programmes were offered in the cutting-edge University of Tehran by key figures such as Morteza Momayez, the prodigy whose creations are forever printed on the national memory of Iranians.

As the cultural sphere rapidly developed in the 1970s by the direct support of the monarchy state, Momayez along with Ghobad Shiva, Sadegh Barirani, Behzad Hatam and Farshid Mesghali constituted the pioneers of graphic design in Iran. Though the impact of western artistic discourses is apparent in the general practice of most of these graphic designers, an ever-present search for an Iranian identity in graphic design was already prominent in their works. These graphists would come to impact the entire graphic design practice of Iran in the following decades.