How Persian shadow theater is bringing an Iranian epic to life

Inspired by German animation and an American puppeteer, Hamid Rahmanian has turned an ancient Iranian epic into a live show. Credit: Cristoforo Magliozzi. Courtesy PRI.

by Daniel A. Gross, PRI

One day last summer, Hamid Rahmanian was in his graphic design studio in New York, thinking about how to adapt a classic Persian story to the stage. Shahnameh, or “The Book of Kings,” is one of the world's longest epic poems. Rahmanian, who grew up in the Iranian capital of Tehran, had already adapted it into an intricate illustrated book. Now he wanted audiences to see it live.

“In my studio, I had a projector,” says Rahmanian. He turned it on and walked around, watching his shadow dance across the screen. He suddenly thought to himself: “This is it!” Rahmanian was already interested in shadow puppetry — and in that moment, he realized he could retell an ancient story with the modern twist of colorful, computer-designed backgrounds.

“I have a graphic design and a filmmaking background — and they can meet behind the screen, in the form of shadows,” Rahmanian remembers thinking.

With help from a team of actors and animators, including the puppeteer Larry Reed, Rahmanian ultimately designed 156 shadow puppets and 138 backgrounds. Now the show, which he calls “Feathers of Fire,” is on a tour of the United States. It's been performed in Brooklyn, Boston, and San Francisco. The next stop, on May 15, is New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art; two weeks after that, it will go up in the Freud Playhouse in Los Angeles.

Tales of exile and of home: Iranian diaspora in literature

Iranian fiction in English

Iranian woman walks through the snow at Azadi square in Tehran. Photograph: Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters. Courtesy the Guardian.

by Sanaz Fotouhi for Tehran Bureau, The Guardian

When I was at university studying English literature, I took an interest in diasporic and migrant writings. Authors from India, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean all told the same kind of stories of exile and resettlement. Their books raised a shared set of concerns, reflecting homelessness, loss and attempts to reconstruct identity.

As someone who is part of the Iranian diaspora, my heart connected to these stories, but at the same time I felt something was missing. Yes, I sympathised with the writers and related to their experiences, but I could not identify with the cultural details.

I felt my voice, as an Iranian living away from my homeland, was missing. Back then, in the late 1990s, there were few Iranians writing in English about their experiences.

This changed one summer when browsing a dingy bookstore in Hong Kong, I came across Susan Pari’s The Fortune Catcher. I read the book in two days, weeping my way through it. Finally someone had depicted my very own Iranian experience in English. Now the world might understand our stories. Stumbling on this book was the beginning of a journey that has preoccupied my life.

Over the next several years, I dedicated myself to finding, reading, and researching the literature of the Iranian diaspora. Gradually, I came upon an emerging body of work. These books grew from a handful in the late 1990s to around 300 today.

Having read most of the books by Iranian writers in English, at least those that I could get my hands on, I see a body of work that paints a beautifully diverse picture of the Iranian diaspora, and makes a great contribution to the way Iranians are seen and see themselves.

Linguistic diversity as opportunity

Mother-tongue instruction in multi-ethnic Iran

Iran is a state of many ethnicities where over a dozen languages are spoken, including, among others, Persian, Baluchi, Luri, Arabic, and Turkish. Unfortunately, the country’s education policy does not take account of this linguistic diversity.

Delegations from the peoples of Persia: ″since the Achaemenid era, Iran has been a state of many ethnicities and has remained in existence even without the imported concepts of ′nation′ and ′nation state′″, writes Manutschehr Amirpur. Courtesy Qantara.

by Manutschehr Amirpur, Qantara.de

The Islamic Republic of Iran has continued the policy of the old regime in that it only permits the learning of the country′s official language (Persian), even though this contradicts the obligations set out in the constitution. The widespread tradition of ′one country, one language′, which lives on across the Middle East despite the fact that reality is very different, is also alive and well in Iran.

A glance at the situation in neighbouring states highlights the problem. The country that has been known as the Republic of Turkey since the end of the First World War justifies its existence by the doctrine that the population of Asia Minor has only one language and one religion. This doctrine completely ignores the Kurds and the Alevis.

Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine – countries that were practically created on the drawing board by the French and English mandate powers after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the First World War without any thought to ethnic or historical borders – also adhere to this policy. In fact, this policy, which is based on the principle of ′that which must not, cannot be′, is one of the reasons behind the civil wars in Turkey and Iraq.

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.

Numinous

Yari Ostovany at Stanford Art Spaces

Chelleneshin #21, oil on canvas, 30 x 22 inches. Courtesy The Huffington Post.

Interview by John Seed, The Huffington Post

The paintings of Yari Ostovany, now on view at Stanford University's Paul G. Allen building, are stylistically related to works by second-generation American Abstract Expressionists -- for example Helen Frankenthaler and Jules Olitski -- but as curator DeWitt Cheng notes, they also are inspired by and refer to the artist's Iranian cultural background. For example, the title of Ostovany's painting Chelleneshin refers to a period of solitude:

Chelleneshin is a compound word in Persian consisting of the words Chelleh; which describes a period of forty days; and Neshin, which literally means sitting. It refers to a seeker going into solitude for a period of forty days and forty nights to pray and meditate. In several mystical traditions, The Cycle of Forty is a common duration needed for spiritual metamorphosis and transitions to another, transcendent dimension.

Ostovany's interest in and ability to reference culture strikes DeWitt Cheng, who organized the exhibition, as admirable:

"I find his seriousness about spirituality and his cultural heritage interesting and inspiring. I wish that more artists today took it upon themselves to attain a modicum of cultural literacy both inside and outside of their disciplines/professions. And Yari makes beautiful, gutsy paintings too."

I recently interviewed Yari Ostovany and asked him both about his background and his art.

What can you tell me about growing up in Iran? Were you always artistic?

My father's love of music (both western classical and Persian classical music) meant that music was always filing the air in our house when I was growing up.

My first love was poetry, modern Persian poetry to be precise. When I was 14 a friend of mine who had started taking painting classes encouraged me to do so as well saying that she thought it wold suit my temperament perfectly.

My first art class was a Tehran University extension class while I was still in high school (my sophomore year). I was hooked. Gallery hoping in Tehran became my favorite pastime and the newly built Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art my hangout.

Creativity and High Quality of Iranian Art in Medieval Time

Humay on the day after their wedding has gold coins poured over him as he leaves Humayun’s room. The name of the artist, Junayd, is inscribed in the arch above Humayun's head (Add.18113, f. 45v) - See more at: Asian and African studies blog. Courtesy The British Library.

Professor Blair teaches about all aspects of Islamic art from the seventh century to modern times. She offers surveys on Islamic art, architecture, and urbanism, as well as research seminars on the Silk Road, the Islamic book, and the arts of the object.

Interview by Maryam Kamali, Iranian Medieval History

Dear Prof. Blair it is a great pleasure for me to have an interview with you regarding Islamic medieval architecture. One of the controversial issues in Iranian studies is which period can be specified as the medieval time. Based on art history which phase of history do you regard as the medieval history of Iran?

I would say that for me as an art historian medieval history runs from post-Sassanian up to the modern period. So we are talking about chronological centuries, sometime between the eighth and the tenth centuries depending on where you are in Iran up until the pre-Modern period, which would be around 1500, so up to the rise of the Safavids.

 Based on the characteristics of the Iranian art and architecture to what phases do you divide the medieval history of Iran?

Pre-Mongol and Post-Mongol phases because the Mongol conquests were important for art not just in terms of conquests but more so in terms of the exchange of goods and ideas.

 You have done many precious studies on Islamic Art and Architecture including the Iranian art. What are the main characteristics of the Iranian art and architecture that distinguish them from those of other Islamic countries?

I would say that first and fore-most is quality. Iranian art is excellent, it is first rate, it is extremely creative, it is made from very fine materials and it is often just better in terms of quality; not necessarily in terms of interest or historical authenticity but in terms of quality; it is often better than the arts produced nearby.

 Is this also true about the architecture?

Architecture as well; it is just extraordinarily inventive the methods that builders created to support the domes, the techniques they invented to decorate with the tiles; the constant creativity of architects and artists.

Iranian culture to be celebrated in new UK season of events

Didgah – New Perspectives on UK-Iran Cultural Relations. Courtesy The British Council.

by Danny Whitehead, The British Council

The cultural links between the UK and Iran will be explored and celebrated in a new series of events across the UK, launched January 28 by the British Council.

The ‘UK-Iran Season of Culture’ will feature three months of events which aim to promote, and develop the cultural relations ties between the UK and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Building on long-standing links and contemporary collaboration, the British Council’s UK-Iran Season of Culture will strengthen opportunities for greater cultural engagement, improve mutual understanding, and increase trust.

The British Council has brought together a number of major partners for the Season, including the V&A Museum, the British Library, the Southbank Centre, Asia House, Magic of Persia Foundation, Forest Fringe, the Edinburgh Iranian Festival, theatre groups 30Bird and ZENDEH, Wales One World Film Festival, Modern Poetry in Translation, and publishers IB Tauris.

The UK-Iran Season of Culture will see performances, talks, discussions, and exhibitions across the UK highlighting the richness of Iran’s heritage, the dynamism of its contemporary culture, and the strength of and potential opportunities for UK audiences and organizations in engaging with Iran. The Season comes at an important time in UK-Iran relations.

The Koran Does Not Forbid Images of the Prophet

The Charlie Hebdo killers were operating under a misapprehension. Courtesy Topkapı Palace Library and Newsweek.

by Christiane Gruber, Newsweek

In the wake of the massacre that took place in the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, I have been called upon as a scholar specializing in Islamic paintings of the Prophet to explain whether images of Muhammad are banned in Islam.

The short and simple answer is no. The Koran does not prohibit figural imagery. Rather, it castigates the worship of idols, which are understood as concrete embodiments of the polytheistic beliefs that Islam supplanted when it emerged as a purely monotheistic faith in the Arabian Peninsula during the seventh century.

Moreover, the Hadith, or Sayings of the Prophet, present us with an ambiguous picture at best: At turns we read of artists dared to breathe life into their figures and, at others, of pillows ornamented with figural imagery.

If we turn to Islamic law, there does not exist a single legal decree, or fatwa, in the historical corpus that explicitly and decisively prohibits figural imagery, including images of the Prophet. While more recent online fatwas can surely be found, the decree that comes closest to articulating this type of ban was published online in 2001 by the Taliban, as they set out to destroy the Buddhas of Bamiyan.

In their fatwa, the Taliban decreed that all non-Islamic statues and shrines in Afghanistan be destroyed. However, this very modern decree remains entirely silent on the issue of figural images and sculptures within Islam, which, conversely, had been praised as beneficial and educational by Muhammad 'Abduh, a prominent jurist in 19th century Egypt.

In sum, a search for a ban on images of Muhammad in pre-modern Islamic textual sources will yield no clear and firm results whatsoever.

Everything and Nothing: A Meeting with Parviz Tanavoli in Tehran

Poet of Persia

Parviz Tanavoli as a student at Tehran’s Honarestan-e Honar-haye Ziba in 1953, and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Carrerra, Italy, in 1957. Courtesy Maryam Eisler and Shiva Balaghi respectively, and REORIENT.

by Joobin Bekhrad, REORIENT 

After taking a final swig of doogh, haphazardly gathering my sundry belongings into my weathered canvas satchel, and kissing my friend three times on the cheeks, I rush down a rickety flight of stairs to a picturesque summer scene in Deh-e Vanak, a sleepy hamlet but a short drive from the mania of Tehran’s Vanak Square. Brushing shoulders with a covey of weary-eyed mechanics, their gasoline-smeared faces wisened by the beating sun and heartache in equal amounts, and traversing the pothole-laden thoroughfare with a characteristically Western trepidation, I struggle to find my taxi driver amongst the scores of moribund Peykans and sooty Peugeot 206s. By a stroke of ill luck, the traffic today is unusually awful, and I’m already half-an-hour late for another get-together with an artist. This artist, however, is somewhat different from the others I know, whom I usually meet in the tawny-hued lobby of the Hotel Homa – or rather, the ‘Old Sheraton’, as those from the pre-Revolution days are wont to call it – or in the frieze of cozy coffee shops clustered together in the Sayeh Tower opposite the Mellat Park. He’s somewhat of a legend, venerated both abroad and at home: a reality that comes as a welcome surprise in a nation whose artists usually enjoy iconic status posthumously. I had spoken to him at length over the phone towards the end of his winter ‘migration’ in Vancouver a few months ago, and he’s certainly no stranger, although I’ve yet to meet him in person. The stifling heat is certainly not making the situation any more relaxing, and, as I finally manage to furl myself in the backseat of the tiny Peugeot, I feel a tepid patch of sweat underneath my arms. ‘Agha,’ I say with diffidence, ‘can you please turn on the cooler?’. He casts a sidelong glance in the rearview mirror, flicks a switch, and we head for the dusty foothills of the Alborz mountains.

As soon as we find our way onto the highway, we hit a gridlock. While the synth-soaked sounds of a maudlin pop song set to the proverbial 6/8 rhythm continue to emanate from the car radio and we find ourselves in a midday jam, the driver decides to while away the time by striking up conversation. ‘What do you do?’ he asks. Not having the patience to get into any details, I provide a desultory response. ‘I’m in the arts business’. ‘Ah, are you a singer? A wedding singer?’ comes the reply. For God’s sake, move! I shout in vain in the recesses of my mind, looking ahead worriedly at the swarm of white and grey cars embellished with religious slogans and Zoroastrian icons. To add to the drama, the artist in question isn’t picking up either of his telephones, and I wonder whether he’ll be in his studio at all by the time we finally reach it.

Persian Letters

The allure and enduring legacy of Persian Nasta’liq calligraphy

Detail of a work from Sadegh Tirafkan’s ‘Body Curves’ series. Courtesy REORIENT.

by Kevin Schwartz, REORIENT

When the famed calligrapher Mir Emad was murdered at the Safavid court in 1615 – perhaps on account of artistic rivalry or perhaps because of his religious affiliations – an important chapter in the history of the calligraphic script known as nasta’liq came to a close. Mir Emad was not the originator of nasta’liq, which emerged in 14^th century Iran as a likely marriage of two other styles (naskh and ta’liq), but he was nonetheless largely regarded as its undisputed master, attracting admirers among his Safavid patrons, Mughal emperors in South Asia, and countless others even long after his death. His demise brought to end a prolific period of nasta’liq production that witnessed the rise of an unknown script to one heightening the sensory reception of Persian verse to an artistic end in itself, often overpowering the meaning of the texts it was used to write with its visual appeal. In but a few centuries, nasta’liq had triumphed as the premier style for artfully presenting the words of poets and authors writing in Persian, both major and minor (in addition to occasionally being used for Ottoman Turkish, and in rare instances, Arabic). This rich period in the history of the script, the study of which is at times relegated to an afterthought compared to other Persianate arts such as poetry, painting, and architecture, is the subject of a new exhibition entitled Nasta’liq: The Genius of Persian Calligraphy at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C. On display there are single folio pages and books featuring examples of nasta’liq in jali (large) and khafi (minute) scripts, as well as the calligraphic implements employed, making for an altogether admirable overview of a script that shot across the Persianate world between the 14^th and 17^th centuries and set the artistic standard for Persian calligraphy.

The Genius of Persian Calligraphy charts the emergence and proliferation of nasta’liq through the exploration of four of the style’s most preeminent exponents: the presumptive inventor, Mir Ali Tabrizi (active between 1370 and 1410); the exemplar of the classical style, Sultan Ali Mashhadi (d. 1520); the large-format specialist, Mir Ali Haravi (d. 1550), and the aforementioned Mir Emad al-Hasani (d. 1615). Each of these calligraphers’ artistic output mirrors an important phase in the development of nasta’liq, and lends insight into a specialised world of calligraphic expression. Beginning with the mastery of Mir Ali Tabrizi, whose talents and instruction led to the consecration of a number of selselehs (lineages) in eastern Iran and beyond, and continuing onwards to the peerless works of Mir Emad at the court of Shah Abbas the Great, the exhibition considers how the calligraphers honed their skills through long hours in their ateliers and raised nasta’liq to the highest reaches of aesthetic delight for patrons, kings, and connoisseurs throughout the Persianate world, from Anatolia to South Asia. The end result was the creation of a style equally attractive for calligraphers crafting the looping letters and diamond-shaped diacritics of the delicately curved script as it was for the connoisseurs left in awe of its artistry.

Persian classical music mourns a master

The death of virtuoso Mohammad Reza Lotfi marks the end of an era.

Shajarian and Lotfi, Shiraz Art Festival, 1976

by Hamid Dabashi, Al Jazeera

The recent death of Iranian master musician Mohammad Reza Lotfi (1947-2014) on May 2 at the age of 68 marks a crucial turning point in the history of classical Persian music and its spectacular rise and fall as a performing public art. 

Lotfi was a Tar and Setar virtuoso who had collaborated with prominent Iranian vocalists Mohammad Reza Shajarian, Shahram Nazeri, and others and along with a handful of other master musicians of his generation had transformed Persian music from its slumbering, sedate and secluded courtly and mystical milieu into a massive scale public and vastly popular art form. It is impossible to imagine the social history of Iran of the last half a century and through the thick and thin of a cataclysmic revolution and a bloody war without thinking of the definitive presence of classical Persian music as reconceived by Lotfi's generation of master musicians. 

Mohammad Reza Lotfi was part of a generation of classical musicians who exponentially expanded the public sphere upon which Persian classical music found and performed itself. This proud possession of a rich and diversified culture entered the public sphere in earnest in the course of the Constitutional revolution of 1906-1911, and with the establishment of Tehran Radio in 1940s and subsequently Iranian National television in 1960s and the Shiraz Art Festival in the 1970s reached its spectacular zenith.

Today lovers of Persian music remember the young Lotfi and Shajarian and their fellow musician Naser Farhangfar's confident and ambitious visages from their legendary performance of the tasking Rast Panjgah scale in Shiraz Art Festival in 1975. From that iconic moment at the mausoleum of Hafez in Shiraz Persian classical music began a long and loving rendezvous with contemporary Iranian social history.

Music and Power in Iran: An instrument of propaganda and control

In her essay, Maria Koomen examines the important role played by music in the history of Iran, in particular since the Islamic revolution of 1979

Mohammad Reza Shajarian, middle, performs with Mojgan Shajarian, 2nd left, and Majid Derakhshani composer, 2nd right, during a concert with Shahnaz Ensemble band in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Thursday, Feb. 17, 2011. The concert ends with about 2500 audience chanting anti Iran's government slogans. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili). Courtesy Qantara.

by Maria Koomen, Qantara

The permissibility of music has been contested in Iran since the onset of Islam in the seventh century AD when Muhammad passed and his companions sought to keep men's minds away from malahi (forbidden pleasures): wine, women and song. While the Koran doesn't condemn music per se, it claims that music can lead to a loss of reason resulting in "uncontrollable behaviour" and an "inflammation of passions".

After the Prophet's death, Islamic purists began to collect his sayings, or hadith. One ancient hadith says: "Listening to music leads to discord, just as water leads to the growth of vegetation." Hadith were then used by legists to effectively forbid music, save that tolerated by Muhammad. Music in Iran was to uphold these Islamic standards and abide by the Islamic moral code established by the Koran and the hadith.

However (in)compatible it may be with Islam, music is deeply rooted in the country's rich and diverse history. In addition to the practice of halal (compatible) music, Iranians have historically maintained the practices of makruh (blameworthy yet tolerated) and haram (incompatible) music.

Before the advent of music reproduction and other information communication technologies (ICT), music – underground or not, halal or haram – was confined to physical locations in real-time, historically controllable by authorities with centralised power in a physically and temporally confined country.

Poetry of protest gives view into distant worlds

by Maya Weeks, Index on Censorship

A few weeks ago, 13,000 writers swarmed Seattle for the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference. In the seaport city known for its ideal reading (and writing) weather — and home to poet Maged Zaher – writers filled hotel rooms and bars. On official panels they debated the state of contemporary literature, and at offsite readings and parties, they celebrated the written word.

The song of the nightingale / Is not up for sale
Ziba Karbassi, Gravequake

On the other side of the hemisphere, Ziba Karbassi doesn’t need to attend a conference to know what contemporary literature looks like. Born in 1974 in Tabriz, Iran, this rising star of Persian poetry, who also writes in her first language of Azeri Turkish, has been living in exile in London since leaving her country in 1989. Karbassi has published eight books of poetry in Persian, and with Stephen Watts, she has translated much of her work into English.

Taken from an incident close to the author’s family in the 1980s, her poem “Death by Stoning” depicts a young pregnant woman taken to prison, tortured, and stoned to death:

I am not a scaffold to be toppled
not a felled tree to be sunk in the flood

I am only a bag of bones and skin
smashed about

The heavy consonants in the nouns and adjectives and the scattered form of the poem demonstrate the mother-to-be’s “anguished, loving, and crazed” state of mind. “Death by Stoning” shows how poetry can give us a view into worlds distant from — but not entirely unlike — our own. Poetry can also play a part in shaping our world.

Rumi’s Norouz Greeting

Text from the facsimile edition of the oldest extant manuscript of the Masnavi, dated 577 AH/ 1278 AD, folio 281A, in the Konya Mavlānā Museum, published by the Turkish Ministry of Culture, 1993. Image courtesy of Alan Williams.

Now leave this, father, New Year’s Day is come,         

the creatures’ mouths are sweetened by our Maker.

Back to our river came the spirit’s water,                     

our King has come back to our neighbourhood.

Fortune parades herself and trails her skirts,                 

and beats the drum to break vows of repentance.

Once more the flood has swept away repentance,      

our chance has come now sleep has got the watchman.

The drinkers quaffed the wine and all got sloshed!    

Tonight we’re going to wager our possessions!

From ruby life-increasing spirit-wine                               

we’re ruby in a ruby in a ruby.

The place has come alive again – delightful!                

Go burn esfand against the evil eye!

I hear the noise of happy revellers!                               

Beloved, we must always be like this!...

Translated by Alan Williams from the Sixth book of Rumi’s Masnavi, ed. R.A. Nicholson vv. 939-946 (ed. M. Este‘lami 944-951).

Alan Williams is British Academy Wolfson Research Professor 2013-2016 and is also Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Manchester, England. 

The Persian nightingale and the flowers of hope

Shahram Nazeri is the undisputed master of setting Rumi's poetry to music. At a recent concert in Tehran, the renowned musician sang his audience into a state of ecstasy and gave voice to the Iranians' hopes for a brighter cultural future. After several barren years, the cultural scene is indeed showing tentative signs of change.

Iranian musician Shahram Nazeri. Courtesy Qantara.

by Massoud Schirazi, Qantara

It is midwinter in Tehran, and the concert season is underway. For two long months there were no large concerts – or at least no joyful ones – anywhere in the country. In the month of Moharram, during which Shia Muslims mourn the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, happy occasions and music for entertainment purposes are not deemed appropriate. Traditional restaurants refrain from live performances and teahouses turn the background music down. The month after that, Safar, is the time of Arba'een, the fortieth day after Hussein's passing, and the anniversary of Mohammed's death, which makes such musical events equally taboo.

Among the big names in Iranian music who have started announcing their concerts again in newspaper ads and on posters is Shahram Nazeri. Alongside Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Ali Reza Ghorbani, Nazeri is one of the most popular classical singers in Iran. The "New York Times" once called him "the Persian nightingale".

The cultural face of Iran

Shahram Nazeri's benefit concert for victims of leprosy in the festival hall of the Milad tower is soon sold out. Audience numbers at performances by popular singers like Nazeri are very high in Tehran. For the size of the city, Tehran's concert scene is rather meagre, as most of the artists left the country after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Others – like Shahram Nazeri – stayed and continued to lend Iran a cultural face, even under the difficult conditions of censorship.

Iranian director returns from artistic exile to stage classic tale

With 22 students in tow, husband-and-wife team make journey from Vancouver to a Tehran stage

Stained glass display at Vahdat Hall. Courtesy Guardian.

by Tehran Bureau correspondent, Guardian

“These ... these are the men of Iran ... and they say with a heavy heart: ‘What can we do now? For our bows are broken, our arrows have no place and our hands lie trembling.’ It was exactly as they described. For they had returned from a long war.”

So begins the tale of Aurash, as told by writer and director Bahram Beyzaie. The legend of Aurash the archer is woven into Iranian folklore; among the various texts in which it is mentioned is the Shahnameh, the national epic written more than 1,000 years ago by Abolqasem Ferdowsi. In 20th-century Iran, two men brought the legend back to Iranians’ consciousness: Siavash Kasrayi, with a poem in 1959, and the following year by Beyzaie, then just 21, with a script – more precisely, a barkhani: a story to be read aloud.

Despite his wishes, Beyzaie never got to direct a version of his Aurash barkhani for the Tehran stage, but Ghotbeddin Sadeghi finally did in 1999. Sadeghi, given the smallest space in Tehran’s City Theatre complex, the Chahrsou room in the basement, masterfully brought the sweeping story of war and its aftermath to life.

In Beyzaie’s telling of the story, Iran has been defeated in a long, wearying conflict. Bruised and broken, the country must send an archer to shoot from the highest summit of the Alborz mountains. The spot where his arrow lands will mark Iran’s new border. Aurash is a simple stablehand who, through a series of misadventures, is compelled to take on this great duty. As he makes the gruelling journey to the Alborz, the storyteller declares, “It is your soul that will throw the arrow, and not the power of your arms.” When the time finally arrives, he and the bow become one, disappearing over the horizon. Iran gets back every inch of its land but Aurash is never seen again. The barkhani concludes with the line, “But I know a people that still say Aurash shall return.”

The Strange Fruits of Fascination

Exploring the mutual fascination between Iran and Europe through art in Switzerland

Still from Hamed Sahihi’s ‘Observer’. Courtesy REORIENT.

by Natasha Morris, REORIENT

Though the German word sehnsucht is often translated as ‘fascination’ in English, it also carries with it connotations of longing and desire. Between September 2013 and January 2014, the concept of sehnsucht was explored, particularly with respect to the longstanding relationship between Iran and Europe. Focusing on the threads of contact woven between the 1600s to the present day, a rich and thought-provoking dialogue of aesthetics, politics, and identity was presented, which featured some 200-odd works from both Persian and European classical artists, as well as some of Iran’s most important contemporary artists.

Nestled in a park below the Alpine mountains, Museum Rietberg is widely known as Switzerland’s sole museum dedicated to the showcasing of non-European art. For the exhibition, the building’s transparent façade was covered with confetti of green geometrical shapes that implied a sort of serendipitous Islamic minimalism, while the work chosen for the poster of the recent exhibition, Sehnsucht Persien – roughly translating to The Fascination of Persia – was one of a series of towering late 17^th century Safavid oil paintings depicting quixotic characters amongst ornate backgrounds. Although thought to have been decorated for the interiors of Isfahan’s wealthy elites, the subjects in the paintings were devoid of any concrete identity or attribution, thus presenting an immediate allure for the beholder. An older enigma in the series, that of a blonde, blue-eyed man in flowering Turco-Georgian robes stood out particularly luminescent beneath the dim lighting inside the museum.

The exhibition itself, housed deep within an underbelly extension of the building, presented an admixture of the grace and delicacy of classical Persian and European works with the beauty and brutality of ones by contemporary Iranian artists. The curation by Axel Langer and Susann Wintsch was sensitive in its display of a refreshing departure from the usual narrative of trade in an exhibition hinged on cross-cultural exchange. Speaking with Langer, he told me that the link he drew between his curated works became increasingly conceptual rather than formal, which resulted in comparisons between the pieces that were at times more subtle than straightforward. Langer and Wintsch didn’t shirk from past-present dialogues either, although the works by the contemporary artists in the exhibition seemed to be more influenced by modern-day Iran, their historical ties and connections with a Perso-European past being largely formulated through the curation. Also present there, sprinkled throughout the impressive and varied exhibition catalogue, were black and red caption boxes presenting a tripartite and trilingual dialogue between the works from Baroque Europe, Safavid Persia, and contemporary Iran.

Reflections of Persia

An Italian photographer’s lifelong love affair with the land and culture of Iran

Reflections of Persia celebrates the journey of a scholar, photographer, literary translator, and above all, an Iranologist, who has gone above and beyond the political borders of Iran

Riccardo’s Iran, discovered and rediscovered in verdant valleys, dense forests, and desert plains becomes a mirror in which the world and its distant lands appear before one’s eyes.  From the Iranian Encounters series (1972 – 2006). Courtesy REORIENT.

by Aria Fani, REORIENT

Imagine a teenager having recently immigrated to the United States spending the summer in his native Shiraz. The August of Shiraz, hot and dry, draws him inside the bookstores of Molla Sadra avenue. Intimately familiar with the poetry of Sohrab Sepehri, he has a ravenous appetite for commentaries on Sepehri’s oeuvre, which encompasses too many titles to note, even in a bibliography; and, with his new camera, one may even say this teenager has an eye for photography. He grabs a few books, goes to the cashier, and spots underneath the display case at the counter a copy of Ta Shaghayegh Hast (While Poppies Bloom) – an exquisite find!

With colours popping out of its cover, While Poppies Bloom is a coffee table book of 80 photographs of Persian landscapes published together with the poetry of Sohrab Sepehri in both Persian and English. It represents a collaborative effort between the translator, Karim Emami, and the photographer and Iranologist Riccardo Zipoli. In the book’s introduction, written with sincerity and style, Riccardo speaks of his love affair with Iran, its culture, and its people.

Upon his return to the United States, the teenager in question reached out to Riccardo; he admired how well his images of rural Iran captured the voice and sentiment of Sepehri’s poems. Their correspondence marked the beginning of a friendship, initially formed through phone conversations and emails, until the two eventually met several years later over coffee in Campo San Polo in Venice, Riccardo’s ‘second’ home.

Although their correspondences had primarily been of an intellectual nature, their first meeting held a casual, social pleasure as well. The young man – yours truly – immediately stepped into a different world through Riccardo’s eloquence in Persian, his knowledge of Iranian geography, and his ability to tune in to the nuances of Iranian society. With a style of speaking and humour unique to him, tactfully and humbly, Riccardo began to describe his first encounter with Iran in 1972. Having reached Iran via a road trip through former Yugoslavia and Turkey with his mentor, Gianroberto Scarcia, Riccardo’s one-month stay in the country commenced a lifelong love affair that brought together his passion for exploring the Iranian landscape and his area of expertise, Persian poetry.

Fake – Idyllic Life

Shoja Azari, Banquette of Houries, (The King of Black), 2013, lenticular 3D depth on acrylic sheet, 76.2 × 105.41 cm. Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery, New York and ArtAsiaPacific.

by Bansie Vasvani, ArtAsiaPacific

In the press release for Iranian artist Shoja Azari’s exhibition “Fake – Idyllic Life” at the Leila Heller Gallery, New York, the artist states, “Faced with an increasingly hostile world governed by identity politics I approached this new series as a way to examine assigned and reassigned identities.”

Referencing famous 19th-century Orientalist paintings by Jean-Léon Gérôme, Eugène Delacroix, and Jean-Auguste Dominique-Ingres, that depict slaves waiting on reclining odalisques, Azari attempts to re-envision the objectified female body by making its objectification explicit. This is also an effort to challenge Western perceptions of the Middle East by generating more empowering narratives.

In Oriental Bath or Bunnies R Us (2013) and Oriental Interior or Bunnies R Us (2013), Azari attempts to upend the intentions of the original paintings by replacing the women’s languishing bodies with upright, voluptuous Playboy bunnies. The diptych created by the two works is surrounded by a wallpaper of violent images associated with Islam gleaned from YouTube. The composite is sensationalizing, and thus renders the central compositions impotent. Yet this swapping of female bodies, inspite of the replacements more sexualized and potentially more empowered nature, is not entirely effective. The women remain surrounded by 19th-century depitions of dark-skinned slaves and their Playboy status continues to reduce and caricature. In addition, pale bodies pandering specifically to a Western male gaze resist the reassignment of power.

Persian literature convention in Sarajevo

ASPS 2013 Conference: Program

 

by Ari Siletz, Iranian



This September the city of Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina will host the 6th biennial convention of the Association for The Study of Persianate Societies (ASPS). The association publishes research on societies significantly influenced by Persian culture wherever in the world they may be, which is why the gathering is in Sarajevo this year. Under Ottoman rule until 1878, Bosnians still carry the Ottoman high regard for Persian literature and still have institutions dedicated to the study of Persian. Over the centuries, this Eastern European city has produced several poets who wrote in Persian.

This year novelist Mahmoud Dowlatabadi will attend the convention to receive a tribute from ASPS for his lifelong contribution to Persian literature. His monumental novel Kelidar  has been widely read in Iran since the first of ten volumes was published in 1977, but one of his novels written during the early 1980s is still at the censor’s office waiting for an approval that may never come. The Colonel is available in German, English, Italian and Hebrew, but not in the original Persian. The reason is that Dowlatabadi has declined to make the revisions required by the censor’s office.