Symbolic accumulation as an act of universal resistance

Navid Azimi Sajadi at Studio la Linea Verticale

Navid Azimi Sajadi, “Untitled”, 2025, carpet, hand-woven wool tapestry with cotton base, 89×151 cm (179 with fringes). Courtesy Studio la Linea Verticale and Juliet Art Magazine.

by Emanuela Zanon, Juliet Art Magazine

Mater Ex Mater – Act I, solo exhibition by Navid Azimi Sajadi (Tehran, 1982) currently on in Bologna at Studio la Linea Verticale, is the first public configuration of a project that was meant to be more expansive and which now, in its lacunae, concretely shows the destructive consequences of every war. Geopolitical pressure made it impossible to complete the original plan, and what the public encounters is what the artist managed to bring out of Iran before the conflict closed every passage. Carpets produced under his direct supervision in the Mozafariyeh district (a historic area within the bazaar of Tabriz, renowned since the twelfth century for the trade and production of high-quality Persian carpets, now a UNESCO site), ceramics belonging to previous cycles, drawings on paper, preparatory cartoons. It is an Act I that bears its own incompleteness inscribed in the title as a structural condition, the hallmark of a cultural resistance exercised precisely in the act of bringing to safety fragments of a visual universe threatened by the violent irruption of history.

But it would be reductive to read Mater Ex Mater solely through the lens of biographical and political urgency. The project has its roots in a question that Navid Azimi Sajadi has been asking himself for years with growing insistence: what does it mean to be a contemporary Iranian artist? It is not a matter of an identity belonging to be defended nor of a folklore to be preserved, but of the ethical and existential need to understand where one’s gaze comes from, what the deep structures (symbolic, formal, philosophical) are that shape it before critical consciousness and design intention set themselves in motion.

Inside Iran’s New Sculptural Language of Memory and Desire

Hanie Rahimian and Shiva Abazariyan are an emerging Iranian artist duo from Mashhad whose collaborative practice spans sculpture, paper mache, ceramics, installation, and animation. Working between painting‑based drawing and three‑dimensional forms, they blend humor, introspection, and material experimentation to offer fresh perspectives on contemporary Iranian art.

Courtesy Emaho.

Interview by Emaho

Emaho: You both grew up in Mashhad. How has the city, its energy, and your childhood environment influenced the way you perceive the world and eventually led you toward art?

Hanieh: Shiva and I both grew up in Mashhad, a crowded city full of contradictions. Our childhood took shape in a religious and ritualistic environment, yet my family was neither religious nor traditional and had a strong interest in art. My father was particularly passionate about art, especially music. My mother was a teacher who decorated her classroom walls with drawings, and I vividly remember how she would often draw small illustrations for me in the corners of my notebooks. Those images became my first encounters with drawing and sparked my early interest in visual art.

Shiva: My family, like Hanieh’s, was not traditional or religious. They were deeply interested in art and encouraged me from a young age to pursue it. My father and brother were involved in music, and my mother painted. I was always an observer of their practices. I remember my mother drawing for me while telling stories, and sometimes my brother and I would draw directly on the walls of our home. These simple, everyday moments naturally placed me on this path.