“Peace and Paper”

Iran Contemporary Art Biennale 2016

Biennale in Iran invites cross-cultural connection through fragile medium. 

The second edition of the Iran Contemporary Art Biennale brings together paintings, photographs, installations and video art highlighting peace, not war. 

Shadi Ghadirian, ‘Nil’ from the “Nil” series, 2008, 76 x 76 cm. Image courtesy the artist, ICA Biennale and Art Radar.

by Lisa Pollman, Art Radar

The Iran Contemporary Art Biennale (ICA Biennale) successfully concluded its second edition “Peace on Paper” on 31 July at the Niavaran Cultural Center (NCC) in Tehran, with the second leg of the Biennale opening on 20 September 2016 at the Abadan Museum of Contemporary art.

Originally, the Biennale was slated to open in Istanbul, with paper chosen as the primary medium due to the ease in which the material could be transported. After the terrorist bombing of the Istanbul Ataturk Airport in early July 2016, the Biennale was moved back to Tehran, with an even more urgent message towards cultivating peace.

Founded by Majid Abbas Farahani, the organisation originally known as the Culture of Peace Biennale (CP Biennale), the Iranian Contemporary Art Biennale aims to provide an international platform for exchange through the “language” of contemporary art, as noted in the event’s press release:

The Iran Contemporary Art Biennale is an independent and non-profit organization and has been dedicated to the advancement of discourse on peace in the field of contemporary art in Iran. It provides a context for the production and exhibition of Iranian as well as international contemporary art and related cultural practices.

The “ICA Biennale” began as a venture to showcase Iranian contemporary art by providing an international platform for innovative contemporary Iranian artists; alongside established international artists so as to create a space for cultural and social appreciation and exchange.

In from the cold: Iran x Cuba – review

Playful seriousness abounds in this exhibition at New York’s Rogue Space gallery

Old furniture, recycled clothes, found objects, fiber stuffing (machine and hand-stitched), 222x116x118 cm. Photograph: Courtesy of the artist and  the Guardian.

by Dan Geist for Tehran Bureau, The Guardian

Holy Cow. The title of Allahyar Najafi’s painting captures the playful seriousness that abounds in IRAN X CUBA: Beyond the Headline. The show features work by 19 artists from two countries whose revolutions denied them the tender affections of a certain global hegemon for decades on end; now, as if love might actually trump hate in time, they have come together at New York’s Rogue Space gallery.

In Najafi’s piece, the titular bovine, sacred not only in Hinduism – the artist resided in India for several years – but in Iran’s own Zoroastrianism, weeps amid an array of other hallowed beasts. Through the ether swim a pod of Caspian seals, seemingly a personal totem for the artist, who now lives in Rasht, not far from the sea (one takes center stage in Pusa Caspica, after the animal’s Latin name). From a crook in the cow’s form stares a bald eagle, once-secular American iconography now as sanctified as the almighty dollar.

Like the two other paintings by Najafi on view, it’s a menagerie of both subject and media – thick oils encompass a flock of lenticular images, the multilayered graphics that appear to shift along with one’s viewing angle; the primary visual effect Najafi employs is stereoscopic (“two and a half dimensional,” in his nice description). Some lenticulars, of small human faces and abstract forms, peek out from the plastic sheet below the paint, while others may have been added later. There is much for the mind to play with in this work, both in meaning and in process.

Iran TV series set in 1950s draws big audiences with echoes in politics today

With its depiction of Iran under late shah’s despotic rule comes Shahrzad, an independent online drama with parallels in current events

A scene from Shahrzad. The series has viewers glued to their screens in a country where independent online series are a new departure. Photograph: Amirhossein Shojaee/shahrzadseries.com. Courtesy the Guardian.

by Saeed Kamali Dehghan Iran correspondent, The Guardian

Footsteps resonate on cobblestones, snooker clubs are open, women and men go partying together, cabarets are full, the alcohol flows, chapeaux are fashionable, the national theatre is showing Othello and, in the small cinemas along Lalehzar – old Tehran’s Champs-Élysées, Casablanca is showing.

This is Iran 1950s-style, brought back to life in the online TV series Shahrzad, the most expensive production of its kind in the country. Once a week, when a new episode is released, the show has the whole nation glued to their screens.

Netflix may not have yet infiltrated Iranian households, but its style of gripping filmmaking has. Shahrzad is drawing huge audiences in a country where independent online series, produced privately, are becoming increasingly popular as people turn their backs on tightly controlled state television for online substitutes or illegal satellite channels.

Like most films made in Iran, Shahrzad has already been approved by the censors – every single scene, each dialogue and costume has been carefully examined to make sure it adheres to the norms. The result, however, is a series that treads a fine line, even even at times showing the generally unshowable, such as women singing.

Lights, Camera, Revolution

A brief history of Iranian cinema, from Haji Agha to Agha Farhad

Ezzatollah Entezami in The Cow. Courtesy REORIENT.

Iranian cinema has long served as a mirror, reflecting a nation that has absorbed foreign influences, defied restrictions, and expressed hope for its future, all the while proudly drawing upon its own ideologies and deeply-rooted tradition of storytelling

by Zara Knox, REORIENT

To best understand the roots of Iranian cinema, one must perhaps travel back to the early 20th century, when the Qajar monarch Mozaffareddin Shah was shown cinematographic footage during a visit to France. The cinematograph, invented in 1892, was the successor to the kinetoscope that granted viewers the ability to watch quality, illuminated images on a screen, as opposed to through Thomas Edison’s ‘peephole’. Enraptured by the projected pictures of ships crossing the River Seine, street scenes, and camels traversing the Sahara, the Shah ordered his personal photographer, Mirza Ebrahim Khan ‘Akasbashi’ (lit. ‘Master Photographer’), to buy all the equipment necessary to bring film to Iran.(1) The first cinema there was opened in the backyard of an antique dealer in 1904, and soon afterwards, similar establishments cropped up all over Tehran. Such places were initially frequented by the upper classes, mainly, until cinema took over as the most popular form of entertainment, with ticket prices kept deliberately low in order to attract audiences from all backgrounds.

This national interest in cinema also resulted in the opening of the first film schools, most notably Ovanes Ohanian’s Cinema Artist Educational Centre in 1930.(2) An Iranian of Armenian origin, Ohanian had honed his skills at Moscow’s School of Cinematic Art, and was determined to establish a film industry in Iran. Ohanian went on to collaborate with a handful of his graduates on his first feature-length comedy, Haji Agha, Aktor-e Sinema (Haji Agha, the Cinema Actor, 1933), the follow-up to the commercially successful Abi o Rabi (Abi and Rabi, 1930). Haji Agha, starring the director himself, centred on a filmmaker’s attempts to film an unwilling subject, went as far as to praise the virtues of cinema itself. In Nader T. Homayoun’s 2006 documentary, Iran: A Cinematic Revolution, the film historian Mohammad Saninejad claimed that Haji Agha

… Argues cinema’s case eloquently. It presents this art as a modern, progressive tool, in contrast to traditionalist thoughts and values. Ohanian does not tell a story. He had the good idea of showing Iranians their world, setting up a dialogue between them, their thoughts, and the outside world.

Proposal to privatise Tehran’s Modern art museum causes alarm

Director denies that politicians want to transfer collection to private foundation 

(NB this article was slightly modified in light of events unfolding today)

A protest planned for today, and worried reports were beginning to swirl on social media. Image courtesy Tarane Sadeghian

by Tim Cornwell, The Art Newspaper

A reported proposal from Iran’s Ministry of Guidance and Islamic Culture that Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA) and its extraordinary art collection of Western and Iranian art be transferred to a private foundation has caused deep alarm in the arts community.

The museum’s collection includes Modern masterworks acquired before the Islamic Revolution. As last summer’s nuclear deal with Iran has led to an easing of sanctions, museums in Europe and the US have been vying to borrow the works by Picasso, Pollock, Rothko and Warhol among others, may of which have not been seen in the West for 40 years.

An official letter was sent to the museum proposing that it is transferred to the Rudaki Foundation, a source familiar with the institution tells The Art Newspaper. The foundation already supervises the Tehran Symphony Orchestra. 

A protest planned for today, and worried reports were beginning to swirl on social media. However, the museum’s director issued assurances that the plan had been “dissolved” for now. It seems that there has been no official statement on any plan for the transfer. 

"That this collection has remained intact throughout political shifts in Iran is a testament to the power of art and the centrality of culture to the Iranian people," says Shiva Balaghi, a specialist in Middle Eastern art and a visiting scholar at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. "This collection ultimately belongs to the people and should remain in the museum, cared for by art professionals. In turn, the museum's budget should reflect its mission to preserve, document, and exhibit this collection that has universal importance beyond Iran's borders as well."

Playing on the big screen this Iranian new year

Tehran Bureau correspondent joined the crowds queuing in the Tehran winter for the Fajr Film Festival. These are the movies Iranians will be watching over Nowruz

Me directed by Soheil Beiraqi. Courtesy the Guardian.

by Tehran Bureau correspondent, The Guardian

This 34th Fajr Film Festival, which ran for 11 days from 1 February, previewed most movies that will be in cinemas around Iran in the coming year. Being popular at Fajr can boost a film through creating a buzz on television, magazines and social media. 


Fajr can also be helpful on what to avoid. Critic Shadmehr Rastin scoffed on Channel 4’s programme Sinamayeh Iran (Iranian Cinema): “If you want to sell your movie, add a runway girl and a secret pregnancy.” And in truth, betrayal, pregnancy and an angry older brother were a common theme this year. 

Audiences seeking a break from familiar story lines had to attend screenings in the Negah-e No (new look) section, for first-time directors, or Honar-o Tajrobeh (art and experience), added the previous year to showcase art-house films.

Ehsan Biglari and Hamireza Qorbani, two former assistant directors to Oscar-winning writer and director Asghar Farhadi, presented their first feature films in Negah-e No, with Farhadi himself taking a break from shooting his latest project to attend the premieres.

Universally Iranian: artists without borders

Artists who have left the country discuss some of the lures and pitfalls of being branded Iranian

Nicky Nodjoumi, Going Back Home, 2014, oil on canvas, 20h x 24w in / 50.8h x 61w cm. Courtesy Taymour Grahne Gallery.

by Matteo Lonardi for Tehran Bureau, The Guardian

Generations of Iranian artists who have emigrated have struggled with a dualism. On one hand, they want to make art speaking to universal issues. On the other, the market may expect their work to reflect a homeland where they no longer live.

As the country’s geopolitical isolation grew after the 1979 Revolution, Iranian art became sought after by European or American art buyers seeking to enhance their worldly image as collectors. They wanted pieces that would appear Iranian to someone who had never been to the country.

The image of a struggling Iranian artist making work about his tough life makes for “a sexy story,” explains Iranian-American artist Amir Fallah. “It’s exciting for [collectors]. They have been doing that with African-American artists for decades. I’ve tried to resist it as much as I can.”

Some artists navigate this dichotomy well, securing their place on the world art scene. Last year three major museums on the east coast of the United States held exhibitions of Iranian artists. Shirin Neshat had her retrospective at the Hirsh Horn Museum in Washington DC. Parviz Tanavoli’s sculptures were displayed at Wellesley College in Boston. Monir Farman Farmaian had a solo show at the Guggenheim in New York.

These and other artists face a market that expects their work to reflect today’s Iran. It is difficult to identify the degree to which any of the emigre artists profiled below conform to these expectations. But all of them admit to grappling at some point with the issue as artists with an Iranian past.

“Where We Are Standing”

3 contemporary Iranian women artists at Edward Hopper House Art Center

Exhibition takes an intimate look at artists’ “diasporic biographies” through the complexities of Iran’s socio-political milieu. 

“Where We Are Standing: Contemporary Women Artists from Iran” brings together works from 3 artists born before the Iranian Revolution and currently residing in North America.

Golnar Adili, ‘The King-Seat of My Eye is the Place of Repose for Your Imagination’, 2010, two photographs hand-cut and interlaced, 20 x 30 in. Image courtesy the artist and Art Radar. 

by Lisa Pollman, Art Radar

“Where We Are Standing: Contemporary Women Artists from Iran” at the Edward Hopper House Art Center in New York State runs until 24 April 2016. The show is curated by the Centre’s Artistic Director Carole Perry and features Iranian diaspora artists Golnar Adili, Roya Farassat and Shabnam K. Ghazi. The exhibition was a result of a series of serendipitous events, as Perry told Art Radar:

This exhibition came about because two of the artists (Golnar Adili and Roya Farassat) happened to separately submit exhibition proposals to the Edward Hopper House. I liked both of their work, and had just become familiar with Shabnam Ghazi’s work. It struck me that these three artists together would make a strong and compelling show. They all grew up in Tehran, although they came of age at different times. Their work is not connected, other than the strong influence their upbringing and their subsequent displacement had on their visions.

The Edward Hopper House Art Center is located in Nyack, New York and is the birthplace of American realist painter and printmaker Edward Hopper (1882-1967). The building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, opened in 1971 and according to the organisation’s website, seeks “to encourage and nurture community engagement with the arts”.

A Dragon Arrives!

An orange Chevrolet Impala drives across a cemetery towards an abandoned shipwreck in the middle of a desert landscape. It is the 22nd of January, 1965. The day before, the Iranian prime minister was shot dead in front of the parliament building. Inside the wreck, a banished political prisoner has hung himself. The walls are covered in diary entries, literary quotes and strange symbols. Can they help Police Inspector Babak Hafizi in his investigations? Will they shed any light on why there is always an earthquake whenever somebody is buried in this desert cemetery?
Assisted by a sound engineer and a geologist, Hafizi begins his investigations on the ancient island of Qeshm in the Persian Gulf. Fifty years later, their entire evidence, along with intelligence tape recordings, are found in a box, the contents of which attest to the fact that the inspector and his colleagues were arrested. But why? In his new film, Mani Haghighi once again creates a grotesquely absurd experimental set-up. His playful reenactment of mysterious events revolves around a real-life episode – but also imagines a truth of its own. – Berlinale

Still from 'A Dragon Arrives!' (Ejhdeha Vared Mishavad!) , Dir/scr. Mani Haghighi. Iran. 2016. 107 mins. Ali Bagheri, Amir Jadidi, © Abbas Kosari. Courtesy  Berlinale.

Berlin Review

by Lee Marshall, Screen International

Occasionally a film comes along that is as impressive as it is baffling. Iranian director Mani Haghighi’s fifth feature A Dragon Arrives! is such: a meta-cinematic detective story set in 1960s Iran, shot through with counter-culture references and magical realism, channelling both the Westernised cool of the country’s pre-Revolution intelligentsia and the climate of fear and paranoia engendered by the Shah’s repressive regime.

The director deploys an array of post-modern cinematic tricks, from mockumentary-style interviews, to temporal leaps, cool costumes and set design (especially a flame-orange Chevrolet Impala), to a flamboyantly loud rock-influenced soundtrack by Christophe Rezai. The flash and panache of the style sometimes distracts us from storyline and ten different viewers are likely to have ten different opinions about what actually happened in this film. Whether this narrative obliquity will harm the film’s prospects of being seen by arthouse audiences outside of Iran remains to be seen. Certainly this is a good-looking package, more glamorously cinematic than anything Haghighi has made to date.

At its core, this is (probably) a story about three men who go the remote, desertified Iranian island of Qeshm in 1965 to investigate the aftermath of the suicide of a political prisoner. One, Babak Hafizi (Amir Jadidi) – a trilby-and-shade-sporting detective straight out of a Godard film – works as a detective for the Shah’s secret police, referred to as ‘The Agency’. But his mission here seems motivated by personal curiosity: spending the night in a rusted hulk of a ship that somehow got washed up in a desert valley, near a cemetery where earthquakes take place whenever anyone is buried, he brings two acquaintances to check out the seismic conundrum. One, Keyvan Haddad (Goudarzi) is a mystically-inclined sound engineer whose hippy hair and garb would have been precocious even in mid-sixties America. The other, Behnam Shokouhi (Ghanizadei), is a geologist who can identify rocks by tasting them.

Going their own way

For a long time, Persian classical music was considered untouchable. Now the sons of Iran′s great ustads have begun to change traditional music. 

Homayoun Shajarian and Sohrab Pournazeri (source: YouTube). Courtesy Qantara.

by Marian Brehmer, Qantara.de

Scarcely a country in the Middle East is as proud of its musical tradition as Iran. There are few other places in the world where people′s ears are so attuned to the voices of great classical singers. Step into one of the popular shared taxis in Tehran and there′s a good chance the car radio will be playing a classical Persian song.

The last few decades have seen Iran′s traditional music scene dominated by the same stars – Mohammad Reza Shajarian, Shahram Nazeri and Ali Reza Eftekhari. These voices have become hallmarks of the industry and conveyors of important memories, be they personal or historical and political.

Change within a set frame

Iranian singing is based on the traditional dastgah tonal system, characterised by different scales and melodic groups. This system, which forms the basis of Persian classical music, was first systemised at the end of the 19th century. Since then, new elements have been added, but always within a set frame. Just like Persian poetry, which until the emergence of the she′ r-e no (modern verse) adhered to a set of strict rules, Persian classical music was long considered sacrosanct by both singers and instrumentalists.

The Iranian Art Scene Is Exploding Right Now

Jackson Pollock's 'Mural on Indian Red Ground' in the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. All photos by the author. Courtesy Bruno Macaes/Vice.

by Bruno Macaes, Vice

More than once I have heard it said that Jackson Pollock, not Reagan, won the Cold War. After all, in those first two decades, when it was a matter of deciding which regime best symbolized the future, Pollock's abstract expressionism showed America to be a reactionary force capable of forging ahead. On the crucial front of the imagination, the Soviet Union could only retreat.

With these thoughts in mind, I headed to see one of Pollock's masterpieces now being shown in Tehran to find out how this exhibition came about and what subtle impact it might have.

Contrary to what some international media outlets have claimed, it is not the first time that the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art has shown Pollock's Mural on Indian Red Ground, one of the great works of American contemporary art in its collection. The museum also hasn't refrained from showing its Warhols, Oldenburgs, and Lichtensteins. That particular revolution happened 15 years ago. The only requirement that the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance seems to pose is that curators find an appropriate context for showing these works. In this case, the paintings serve as counterpoints to the work of Iranian artist Farideh Lashai (1944–2013), a modernist of prodigious imaginative powers, who is the main focus of the exhibition.

When I meet the Iranian curator, Faryar Javaherian, I tell her that I am particularly impressed by Lashai, especially some of her video art, both lyrical and surreal. But, it turns out, those videos were neither as short nor as surreal as I had thought. They had simply been clipped under censorship instructions. One of them was a particularly beautiful rendition of the classical poem "Layla and Majnun." Since, in Lashai's video, Layla appeared most often unveiled and even undressed, the public version had to be reduced to about 20 seconds, and it made very little sense. Something similar happened a few years ago, when one of the panels of a Francis Bacon triptych had to be removed for supposedly depicting a homosexual scene. The triptych became a diptych.

Initials B.B.

How the man who signs ‘B.B.’ plans to shake up the contemporary Iranian art scene

Sassan Behnam Bakhtiar – Self-Portrait (detail; from the Invincible series). Courtesy REORIENT.

by Joobin Bekhrad, REORIENT

It was one of those afternoons I didn’t ever want to end. All I’d brought with me were a pair of bright blue jeans and snakeskin-print loafers you’d think I’d nicked from the closet of Lady Stardust himself. Before us, the sun was sinking down into the French Riviera, behind its winding hills, into a shining, rippled film flecked with the billowing white masts of what seemed to us on high like a thousand little sailboats. It was all a blur, London and the piss-soaked back alleys of Camden, though the paleness of my reflection in the mirror reminded me of my recent whereabouts. By all accounts, Sassan should have been the happiest of souls there and then, the strapping flaxen-haired lad in the looming shadows cast by two stone Persian lions; but he wasn’t, and still isn’t. His thoughts were far away from the sun, the sea, and those tiny sailboats; he was thinking about his beloved Iran. As was I.

As we sipped on cool rosé and my attention drifted at times towards the subdued strains of the band behind us, Sassan Behnam Bakhtiar told me about his plans to show not only his neighbours in the glitzy Riviera, but the world at large, what he called the ‘real Iran’. The time, he said, pushing back wayward locks of hair, was ripe for new blood in the contemporary Iranian art scene. It was time for change – enough of the tawdry chelo kababi mentality, as I termed it; Sassan would go big, not home. Together with his business savvy and his passion for the arts, he would establish a foundation of his own in support of Iranian artists and play by his own rules. Admittedly, it all sounded rather romantic, and the feeling was in no small way accentuated by the roseate draughts that poured forth from some seemingly endless source. Fortunately, though, we ultimately ended up doing what we said we would on that cool and heady night by the sea; I’ve finally penned that confounded little book of mine, and the doors to the House of Sassan – the Fondation Behnam Bakhtiar – have been swung wide open. That hasn’t calmed either of us down in the slightest, however.

Initially, this conversation was intended to be presented in the form of a podcast. On second thought, fearing that it might degenerate into a heated discussion about the arts between two hot-blooded Iranians, I instead decided to have Sassan explain – as coolly, yet candidly as possible – the premise of his new foundation and what he’s been up to for the past six months or so.

I’m hearing about new Middle East-related arts and cultural foundations so often … they’re popping up like mushrooms! You’ve got ones in the Middle East, Western Europe, North America … Why did you feel the need to establish a new one? What are the foundation’s primary aims and objectives?

Exile, Censorship, and Pink Floyd: A Q+A With Curator Tom Vick on the Iranian Film Festival

Iranian film The President. Photo courtesy of the Freer and Washington Post.

by Steve Kiviat, Arts Desk; Washington Post

The Freer Gallery of Art may be closed, but that's not stopping the museum's annual Iranian Film Festival now in its 20th year. With the Freer closed for renovations, film screenings are taking place at the National Gallery of Art, East Building and the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring. Iranian cinema—much like its country—is often the subject of both controversy and mystique, because of the Iranian government's stringent censorship. Tom Vick, the Curator of Film at the Freer and its sister museum, the Sackler Gallery, spoke to Arts Desk via email about this year’s selections, qualities of Iranian cinema, how Iranian directors work, which selections will appeal to non-cinephiles, and more.

Arts Desk: Can you tell me about the start of the festival? How has it evolved since then?

Tom Vick: The festival began 20 years ago (before my time), at the height of the Iranian New Wave, when directors like [Abbas] Kiarostami, [Mohsen] Makhmalbaf, etc., were getting a lot of attention for the creative and poetic ways they found to make artistic—and sometimes subversive—films despite Iran's strict censorship.

For many years, this mode seemed to dominate Iranian filmmaking, but I have noticed in recent years that Iranian directors are clearly being exposed to more kinds of films from around the world, and the style and subjects of their films are changing accordingly. In addition, the Green Revolution inspired some directors to take more bold political stances.  One thing that hasn't changed over the years is the devotion of the local Iranian community. They come out in droves for the festival, and always express their appreciation.

For those not that familiar with Iranian film, would you say the movies being shown this year have some common characteristics? Does that depend on if the film was made in Iran under the country's rules, or by an Iranian filmmaker working elsewhere?

Six Artists From Iran at Grey Art Gallery

“Global/Local 1960-2015: Six Artists From Iran” runs through April 2 at Grey Art Gallery.

“Projectile 10,” by Shahpour Pouyan, part of “Global/Local 1960–2015: Six Artists from Iran,” an exhibition at Grey Art Gallery. Credit Agaton Strom for The New York Times. Courtesy NY Times.

by Holland Cotter, New York Times

Time decides. When an exhibition scheduled for the winter slot at Grey Art Gallery at New York University wasn’t ready, a replacement had to be found, and “Global/Local 1960-2015: Six Artists From Iran,” set for a future date, was moved forward. If there was a scramble to pull it off, you’d barely know. Organized by the gallery’s director, Lynn Gumpert, the show looks great, thought through, with the improvisatory lift that adrenaline can provide.

One thing that made the switch doable was having some of the art already in hand. In the 1960s, the gallery’s founding patron, Abby Weed Grey (1902-78), traveled to Iran, loved the new art she found there, bought it up and gave it to N.Y.U. As a result, the Grey has the largest holdings anywhere of work by one of the show’s six artists, Parviz Tanavoli, widely considered Iran’s leading modern sculptor, and outstanding examples of paintings by his brilliant but unlucky colleague Faramarz Pilaram.

To these two modernists Ms. Gumpert has added a fascinating figure of a more recent generation, Chohreh Feyzdjou, who died at 40 in 1995. Ms. Feyzdjou hasn’t yet registered on New York’s radar, though she may well do so now. Finally, bringing the show into the present are three young artists — Shiva Ahmadi, Barbad Golshiri and Shahpour Pouyan — born decades and political worlds away from the pre-revolutionary Iran that Ms. Grey knew.

Contemporary art in Iran has always been politically fraught. When Mr. Tanavoli began making sculpture, he had few local models to follow. The tradition of sculpture in Persia had effectively ended in the seventh century with the arrival of iconophobic Islam. Even with sculpture’s return in the secularized 1960s, the question was where to go with it: Should new art be national or international, local or global, in character?

With Iran emerging from a long stretch of Western domination, artists were in the mood to shape a distinctively native aesthetic. At the same time, many of them had visited Europe and wanted to stay at least partly in the global swing. Mr. Tanavoli’s answer to these dual demands was synthesis, and you can see him sorting it out. His 1962 “Figure and Hand” suggests a stack of bazaar-bought pots and pans with a Surrealist overlay. A decade later, in his well-known bronze “Heech,” he seamlessly united three calligraphic characters spelling the Persian word for “nothing” into a single, Brancusi-sleek curve.

Inside the studios of Iran's artists

Italian photographer Matteo Lonardi headed to Tehran to learn about the country away from the news headlines and through its artists

The studio of Bita Fayyazi, 53, is set in smoggy south Tehran, far from the affluence of the capital in the northern reaches. Her art is complex and theatrical, achieved by working with a range of material and people. From those interactions she draws her inspiration. For a recent project, she had a group of people from different socioeconomic backgrounds decorate the interior of a house. Photograph: Matteo Lonardi. Courtesy the Guardian.

by Matteo Lonardi for Tehran Bureau, The Guardian

In secondary school in Italy I was taught art as a form of understanding our predecessors. Teachers compared the harmonious proportions of classical Greek statues to the social equilibrium achieved in Athens in the fourth century BC, and linked Picasso’s Guernica to the horrors of the Spanish civil war.

I was fascinated by the connection between art and history. A few years later, after moving to New York for college, this connection appeared to me not in history books but in the studios of Indian artists.

In the summer of 2010 I was an intern in New Delhi at The Little Magazine, an arts and culture publication. The editor asked me to make an archive of works the magazine was publishing. The first day she gave me a list of names and cab fare.

At each studio, I photographed a few works. Soon I started interviewing and photographing the artists in their work spaces as well. I realised the stories and the images together offered interesting insights into Indian society and politics.

Afterwards I continued the project in Italy, Morocco and New York. A few years later, at Columbia Journalism School, I applied as a team of fellow students for a grant to continue the project as multimedia.

We chose Iran as a place to look at through its artists. We felt that media’s relationship to Iran had been based on stereotypes and one-dimensional portrayals. The idea was to talk about Iran through art instead of politics. The project, called Reframe Iran, uses photo, video and virtual reality components.

Who is buying Iranian art?

A new generation of super rich gather in Dubai to collect modern and contemporary art from Iran

 Courtesy Reframe Iran

by Alexandra Glorioso, Nectarios Leonidas, Matteo Lonardi, João Inada, John Albert for Tehran Bureau, The Guardian

Interest in modern Iranian art began to take off, first in the Middle East and then globally, after Christie’s held its first Dubai auction of Middle Eastern art in 2006. Sussan Babaie, art historian at the Courtald Institute of Art in London, told Tehran Bureau the surge of interest in Iranian art resulted from the amount of art the country had been producing while isolated from international buyers.

The boom in Iranian art lasted only until 2008, when just before the world recession, Christie’s Dubai auction sales peaked at about $29m for the year. Michael Jeha, Dubai managing director and head of sales of Christie’s, said widespread speculation in Iran’s art ended with the financial crisis and the onset of tighter international sanctions against Iran.

In 2009, sales at Christie’s in Dubai plummeted to $12m. And while Dubai had long been a hub for Iranian trade, sanctions against Iran after 2010 made sales even more difficult for Iran-based artists, who were unable to receive payment through many international banks and forced to resort to unreliable third parties. Dubai reluctantly implemented most sanctions by 2012 and became unwilling to process payments, even for non-sanctioned goods like art.

Times change. Dubai is now expected to benefit from the easing of sanctions in the coming year, and prices for Iranian art are already rising there. Christie’s Dubai sales will reach about $19m this year.

Demand for Iranian art is generally reflecting a global trend of rising interest in modern work, said Anders Petterson, founder of ArtTactic, the art market research company.

Collectors are crucial to sustaining demand for Iranian art after the years of boom and bust. So, what are they looking for? The Collectors, featured above, takes you behind the scenes.

This article is part of a multimedia project by ReframeIran, published in partnership with The Tehran Bureau. 


Via The Guardian

Straight Shooter

A new documentary tells the story of a much-loved – and loathed – iconic Iranian automobile

Iman Safaei – Elahi Chap Konam (Oh God, May I Roll Over; courtesy the artist, Shirin Art Gallery and REORIENT)

By Nazli Ghassemi, REORIENT

Made against all odds in a tiny studio in the heart of Tehran, Iran’s Arrow – a 75-minute documentary written, directed, produced, and edited by Shahin Armin and Sohrab Daryabandari – is the story of a car called the ‘Paykan’. Meaning ‘arrow’ in Persian, the film chronicles the social impact of the car during its lifespan on Iranians and Iran itself, both before and after the Revolution. Through a collection of interviews, recovered archival footage, film clips, photographs, and data collected from various sources, Iran’s Arrow follows the Paykan’s tumultuous path in the hands of its Iranian consumers during the four decades in which it was produced.

The Paykan – a seemingly unremarkable car – became a key figure in propelling a nation into modernity upon its production in 1967, and was later radically transformed into a symbol of resistance and endurance following the 1979 Revolution. Afterwards, it was seen as a breadwinner in times of war and distress, and ultimately became a national relic when production came to a halt in 2005. A noble and humble servant, the Paykan is an emblem hacked in Iran’s collective memory; and, to find out more about both the car and the new documentary, I chatted with Shahin and Sohrab in their Tehran studio.

'Art Brief: Iranian Contemporary Los Angeles': Bridging communities, one pop-up at a time

Fariba Ameri, "River of Eden," mixed media on canvas. The artist was one of 12 to be featured in the Advocartsy exhibition, "Art Brief: Iranian Contemporary Los Angeles" at Arena 1 Gallery in Santa Monica. Courtesy Advocartsy and Los Angeles Times.

by Deborah Vankin, Los Angeles Times

Roshi Rahnama started the L.A.-based organization Advocartsy this year, which aims to connect artists, galleries and collectors and bring awareness to artists of Middle Eastern descent. It’s something that Rahnama, a former attorney who grew up in Tehran and immigrated to California with her family in 1979, had been thinking about for more than five years.

As an art collector and member of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Art of the Middle East Contemporary council, she knew scores of talented artists, particularly from Iran. From her dealings with galleries, she was plugged into the fine art world. But she saw a disconnect, she says, between those two milieus. Rahnama hopes Advocartsy can provide exposure for under-represented artists through a series of pop-up exhibitions.

On Thursday evening, Advocartsy debuted its inaugural installation, “Art Brief: Iranian Contemporary Los Angeles,” a show featuring 12 local Iranian and Iranian American contemporary artists. The exhibition of painting, sculpture and photography, co-curated by Rahnama and art critic Peter Frank, consists of artists from a variety of backgrounds.

“But if there’s one idea that binds the work, it’s identity,” Rahnama says. “That just emerged, naturally.”

The Shahnama in Contemporary Iranian Art

Sadegh Tirafkan (Iranian, 1965–2013). Multitude 10, 2008. Digital photo collage, lambda print; H. 29 1/8 in. (74 cm), W. 44 1/8 in. (112 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, 2011 NoRuz at the Met Benefit, 2013 (2013.258). Courtesy Met Museum.

by Courtney A. Stewart, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Though the vast majority of the Met's Islamic collection comprises historical artifacts, we have recently started collecting contemporary art from the regions represented in our galleries. Deciding what exactly is included in the field of contemporary Islamic art is an issue that has been heatedly debated in past years, including most recently at a conference, Contemporary Islamic Art, Design, and Architecture 2015, that I attended in Singapore just a few weeks ago. Scholars have differing opinions of how to define or label works from this category, and our department takes its own particular approach. For us, the collecting mandate is that modern and contemporary works must relate to the historical collection.

A popular theme for some contemporary Iranian artists is to use iconography that refers to the Persian national epic, the Shahnama (Book of Kings), originally composed by Abu'l Qasim Firdausi (935–1020). In the work above, Rustam Returns at Age 30 after Being Brought Up Abroad, Iranian artist Siamak Filizadeh uses new media and popular culture to reference the hero Rustam. This same character appears in illustrations found in various manuscripts of the Shahnama, including the famous sixteenth-century version created for Shah Tahmasp.

Identifiable by his leopard-skin helmet in both the historical and the contemporary depictions, artists have usually portrayed Rustam in a manner that highlights his bravery and strength. In Filizadeh's work, he represents Rustam the hero as a muscular bodybuilder, with the letter "R" covering a red-and-yellow Superman logo on his bare chest. Here, he holds a rocket-propelled grenade launcher with a small decal of the film character Rambo and wears a Dolce and Gabbana belt. Contemporary Rustam appears with a tiled Safavid-style arch and rocks akin to those found in Persian miniature painting, as well as the Shahyad monument (Burj-i Azadi) built in 1971, considered to be the quintessential symbol of and gateway to modern Tehran. The work is a whimsical creation of an immediately identifiable character and uses visual cues to bridge chronology between historical and contemporary Islamic art.

Meanwhile, in Sadegh Tirafkan's Multitude 10, the artist creates a digital photo collage of young Iranian girls performing exercises in a gym class.

Letter from Tehran

Yashar Salahi, Humanity’s Attire, 2014. Ink on cardboard, 121/2 × inches. © Yashar Salahi. Courtesy the artist, Dastan’s Basement and The Brooklyn Rail.

by Yasaman Alipour, The Brooklyn Rail

To my dearest Sheyda,
the soul of my Tehran,
the land of vanishing dreams.

Tehran is a paradox. The airplane begins its descent and the flight attendant announces, “Alcoholic beverages are strictly prohibited and Islamic attire is mandatory.” Somewhere in the sky of Tehran, the silent protest of normality ends; wearing jeans and t-shirts, women give in, get up, and put their hijab on. “Welcome to the Imam Khomeini Airport.” You are officially in Iran.

Here, the art mimics life. Tehran’s history is known to Westerners through the news: political turmoil, dictatorships, demonstrations, revolutions, and then dictatorships again. Expectations of the art are set accordingly. Setting foot inside Tehran means moving beyond the stereotypes and facing real complexities. Even under extreme circumstances, in this city—pressed between the traditional, impoverished downtown and the self-negating high-rises of the wealthy uptown—life and art have found fresh paths. What remains is a question as old as this metropolis: Can a city born out of hopes for modernity still find an identity that accepts its history and culture while allowing for progress?

Friday afternoons are designated for gallery-hopping. Tehran’s youth have developed a weekly ritual of meeting in its galleries, resulting in the rapid expansion of galleries in the past decade, while raising excited curators and enthusiastic collectors, and creating opportunities for young artists. As the heat thickens and grownups doze off, weekend boredom rules. Children of this city’s revolution, now in their twenties and thirties, put on their most outrageous clothes, grab their cigarettes and car keys, and hit the road. In a city without bars and clubs, these gallery visits are a chance to see familiar faces, meet new people, name drop, brag about newly gained knowledge, flirt, have tea, smoke cigarettes, and communicate. In each corner, a piece of theater is enacted. A tall woman with long, half-shaved hair showing off her body in skinny jeans and a Pink Floyd shirt and—mocking the failure of the beige robe and bright red scarf to cover her—announces, “Tehran has no contemporary art.” The round, bearded man wearing a South Park T-shirt and yellow jeans is completely captivated. Relying on his higher education, he gloats, “Well actually, it depends whether we mean contemporary with a capital or small C.” Proud of their sophisticated moment, both sip on their tea. For this crowd, consisting of about three to four hundred repeating characters, utterly middle-class and desperately overeducated, the Friday march is, most importantly, a chance to perform normality and briefly forget the oddity of the situation. Hiding behind the glamour of these packed receptions is art that stems from the anxiety of this lifestyle.