The city’s inaugural art month is bringing creators, galleries and collectors together as Iranians grapple with the trauma of war and unrest
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| At the Artists House in downtown Tehran, Parisa Abbasi’s Repair depicts a human figure fallen apart, with fragments scattered across the floor. Courtesy Najmeh Bozorgmehr and FT. |
A blackened, cracked and scorched canvas hangs in Artibition Art Gallery in Tehran, its Persian inscriptions emerging through layers of soot and ash. Burnt-out candles sit before it, wax spilled across the floor.
The two-panel painting by Mojtaba Amini reflects his experience at the height of the war, when US and Israeli strikes hit Tehran’s fuel depots on March 7, sending a dark cloud over the capital, followed by toxic rainfall. The text reads: “A black chador has covered the city’s sky . . . a woman with a bottle of mineral water washes a blackened cat . . . how ominous the colour black is.” Yet Amini’s darkness is not without an exit. “I know this darkness will subside.”
The painting is part of immutable, a group exhibition and one of dozens of shows, open studios and cultural events taking place across Tehran until September 11 as part of Tehran Art Month, intended to promote the city’s visual arts. It is the first event to bring together so many of Tehran’s galleries at a time when Iranian society is grappling with the trauma of two wars in the past year and bloody unrest in January, in which thousands were killed.
