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, 19 November 2025

Soft Edge of the Blade Vol. 3

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After acclaimed editions in London (Frieze No.9 Cork Street, 2022) and Toronto (Zaal Art Gallery, 2023), “Soft Edge of the Blade” arrives in...
Wednesday, 12 November 2025

Translating Toward Possibility:

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Sarah Faux Interviews Mariam Rahmani by  The Common Friends for over a decade, MARIAM RAHMANI and SARAH FAUX have been connecting for years ...
Thursday, 6 November 2025

“Beginnings”

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The late Iranian American artist’s exhibition exemplified how he expanded the Eurocentric parameters of abstraction. Installation view of MA...

Noble/Savage

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Ali Banisadr’s Mesmerizing Paintings Make Sense of Chaos  Ali Banisadr, installation view of “Noble/Savage” at Olney Gleason, 2025. Photo by...

nameless

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Nairy Baghramian at WIELS — nameless brings together several previously unseen bodies of work in dialogue with the post-industrial architec...
Thursday, 30 October 2025

Raising their Voices: the Iranian artists fighting back

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In Iran, women are forbidden to sing in public. A handful of Berlin ’ s Iranian artists are fighting back with rebellious records. Faravaz F...

Iran and Art in a Cage

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A century of cultural rupture and decline Golestan palace, glory of Iran’s rich arth history. Courtesy Asia Sentinel. by  Amirreza Etasi , A...
Wednesday, 29 October 2025

Real State

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Interview-In Conversation with Shirana Shahbazi About Her Solo Show in Emkan Gallery Shirana Shahbazi, Schaedel-01-2001, c-print on aluminiu...

A Magician of Imagination

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In Dialogue with Farhad Hasanzadeh Interview by Dr. Neda Farnia & Dr. Johari Murray,  CooterMag Born in 1962 in Abadan, Iran, Farhad Has...
Wednesday, 15 October 2025

From migration to rebirth: A story of pain and liberation

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Iranian painter Saye Sohrabi rose from the heart of repression to turn her canvas into a voice for silenced women. Migration wasn’t an escap...

Jafar Panahi’s Cinematic Rebellions

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In the director’s most defiant film yet, a group of Iranians consider killing the man who tortured them in prison. Panahi films a desert sce...

The Armenian Woman, Minoritarian Agency, and the Making of Iranian Modernity, 1860–1979 (New Texts Out Now)

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“We discovered what we call the matrilineal network of activism, spanning from grandmothers to mothers, to daughters, and nieces...”  Houri ...
Thursday, 9 October 2025

The Foot-Licking Demons & Other Strange Things in a 1921 Illustrated Manuscript from Iran

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Courtesy OC. by  Josh Jones ,  OC Few modern writers so remind me of the famous Virginia Woolf quote about fiction as a “spider’s web” more ...
Wednesday, 8 October 2025

Simorgh in Exile:

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Reimagining Iranian Diaspora in Fereshteh Molavi’s Thirty Shadow Birds by Mahdiyeh Ezzati , World Literature Today In Thirty Shadow Birds (...
Friday, 3 October 2025

Contemporary Iranian Art: New Perspectives, Second Edition (New Texts Out Now)

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“What does contemporaneity signify for Iranian artists, and how have they drawn inspiration from contemporary life?” Hamid Keshmirshekan, Co...
Thursday, 2 October 2025

The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran

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#RivetingReviews: Mandy Wight reviews THE NIGHTS ARE QUIET IN TEHRAN by Shida Bazyar, translated by Ruth Martin by Mandy Wight, #RivetingRev...

Filmmaker Homa Sarabi maps her place in the world

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Sarabi's inscribed pieces of parchment drape down to the floor in her office at the Boston Center for the Arts. Courtesy Jesse Costa/WBU...
Thursday, 25 September 2025

Women for Peace: Voices of hope and humanity

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“Women for Peace” is a unique concept-concert that unites voices from around the world to promote reconciliation, hope, and solidarity and p...

Persian Poet: A Woman Made of Fire

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Courtesy Persian Poet and UP Magazine. by Stained Napkins, UP Magazine As a poet, I’m always looking at words throughout the city, whether i...
Thursday, 18 September 2025

This Memoir Is a Bridge to Iranian Solidarity

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Journalists Nilo Tabrizy and Fatemeh Jamalpour discuss the political legacy of women in Iran in “For The Sun After Long Nights” Courtesy Ele...
Sunday, 14 September 2025

Despite red tape from US sanctions, Tehran-based gallery champions Iranian art at The Armory Show

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Owner of O Gallery says her participation affirms ‘importance of cultural dialogue at a time when exchange across borders is increasingly fr...
Thursday, 4 September 2025

‘The Seasick’ exhibition shares stories of Iranian refugees arriving by boat

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Markela Panegyres spoke to artist Elaheh Mahdavi about her and her brother Arman’s recent exhibition The Seasick , at Gallery 1855 in Kaurn...
Wednesday, 3 September 2025

Between Myth and Modernity:

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On Persian Stories, Identity, and the US-Iran Divide Ryan Bani Tahmaseb Considers the Enduring Wisdom of Iranian Myths Courtesy Lit Hub by R...
Tuesday, 2 September 2025

“What They Had to Conceal”

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In this interview, Iranian filmmaker Maryam Tafakory discusses how she abstracts and rewrites post-revolutionary Iranian cinema to reveal th...
Thursday, 28 August 2025

Dialogical Narratives

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at Elizabeth Moss Gallery Samira Abbassy, Nocturnal Bird Spirit , Collage, acrylic, gouache on board, 11 x 14 in, 27.9 x 35.6 cm. Courtesy t...

Review: Desolation

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Hossein Asgari’s Desolation speaks powerfully of the destructiveness of war and the hope that lies in fiction Daniel Handl/Pexels. Courtesy ...
Saturday, 23 August 2025

A man from Shiraz bares his scars:

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Shayan Sajadian’s best photograph ‘Censorship in Iran is pervasive. The state is unwilling to allow an honest portrayal of public life. I fo...
Thursday, 21 August 2025

‘I painted so prison wouldn’t swallow us whole’:

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An interview with Iranian journalist Vida Rabbani ‘When space and materials are scarce, your mind does the work of finding freedom’ Vida Rab...
Thursday, 14 August 2025

Reclaiming the Geometry of Abstraction

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With his latest series of shaped paintings, layered with meaning and symbolism, the artist Kour Pour insists that the so-called canon is inf...
Thursday, 7 August 2025

Seeing Beyond the Visible:

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Hoda Afshar at musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac The acclaimed Iranian-Australian artist’s first solo exhibition in France opens this Se...
Thursday, 31 July 2025

An interview about art, hope and building peace

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with Iranian American artist Shaudi Bianca Vahdat Shaudi Bianca Vahdat  spoke with Real Change about the importance of representation in art...
Thursday, 24 July 2025

‘Sunrise at the Vortex’

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Behind Nima Nabavi ’ s vast geometric vortex painting: converging energy, labor, and structure Image by Tonee Harbert. Courtesy of The Third...
Thursday, 17 July 2025

'I Want to Sing Alone':

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Iranian Film Wins International Prize Despite Persecution “Bidad”. Courtesy of KVIFF by Romina Omidpanah ,  IranWire Iranian director Soheil...
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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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