Shirazeh Houshiary: Pneuma

Iranian Painter Shirazeh Houshiary Explains the Benefits of Painting on the Floor, and Why Nothing Is More Abstract Than Nature

Artnet News caught up with the artist at her West London studio.

Shirazeh Houshiary. ©Shirazeh Houshiary, courtesy Lisson Gallery and Artnet News.

by Naomi Rea, Artnet News 

For Shirazeh Houshiary, being close with nature is key. Even her West London studio is located right by the woods so she can listen to birds and keep in tune with nature’s ebbs and flows.

Houshiary moved to London in 1973, leaving her native Iran to study art. Her installations, paintings, and sculptures often take inspiration from Eastern culture, poetry, and mythology.

Her profile rose alongside some of the U.K.’s most prominent sculptors—such as Anish Kapoor, Tony Cragg, and Richard Deacon—in the 1980s, and she was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994.

To create the five works in her latest solo exhibition, “Pneuma,” now on view at Lisson Gallery in London, she placed her supports flat on the floor and poured water mixed with pure pigment onto canvas, before meditatively layering inscriptions on top of the forms.

We spoke to the artist about connecting with nature, the joys of ambiguity, and what taking long walks along the river can do for her practice.

Iran's Afghan Michelangelo

In 1989, Alikhan Abdollahi arrived in Tehran from Afghanistan after fleeing the conflict in his homeland. He has since established a reputation as a sculptor, whose work has been exhibited internationally

Courtesy Middle East Eye.

by Mohammad Hashemi, Middle East Eye

Alikhan Abdollahi has lived in Iran since 1989, after fleeing war in neighbouring Afghanistan. After arriving in the country, he began working as a caretaker in central Tehran. But Abdollahi also has another life, one which has won him the moniker the “Michelangelo of Afghanistan”, for the Afghan refugee has earned renown as an artist without attending art school (All pictures: Mohammad Esmaeilizadeh)

“When I was in Afghanistan and even early on when I was here [in Iran], I hadn’t seen a sculpture up close before,” says Abdollahi, who was 25 when he left Afghanistan. His journey to becoming a sculptor started with an encounter with an elderly street painter who sold his works on a sidewalk outside Abdollahi’s workplace in 1994. Fascinated by the paintings, he brought the artist a cup of tea and the pair struck up a conversation. The resulting friendship that developed with the man, who was known as Usta Hassan [Master Hassan], would have life-changing consequences for Abdollahi.

The one lesson Usta Hassan had to offer Abdollahi was to not give up on his dreams, irrespective of whatever hardships came his way. One day, out of the blue, an idea struck the young Afghan during one of his regular meetings with the artist - that he and his friend should use the time they were spending chatting together to make statues instead.

Why ‘The Empress and I’ is the most controversial book in the art world right now

An exiled Empress, a score-settling curator, and $3 billion worth of modern art - need we say more?

Empress Farah Pahlavi with Salvador Dali in Paris, 1967. Courtesy of Assouline Publishing and Tatler.

by Maya Asha McDonald, Tatler

The legacy of Iran’s last Empress, Farah Pahlavi (née Diba) - wife of the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi- is unquestionably her patronage of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA). With 1970s Iran flush with oil money, the modern Empress set off with a nearly unlimited budget to amass an art collection that represented a fusion of Western and Eastern art.

It’s in said context that the 78-year-old former Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) curator Donna Stein writes her highly controversial 2021 memoir, The Empress and I: How an Ancient Empire Collected, Rejected, and Rediscovered Modern Art. Stein’s disputed account - which has faced equal parts praise and criticism - chronicles her time working for Her Imperial Majesty’s Private Secretariat between 1975–77.