The Writing on the Wall

  by Aria Fani 

step gently

a nation is 

dreaming...

The construction of the Israeli barrier that isolates the West Bank from the outside world began almost a decade ago. It is now 450 miles long -- the distance from San Diego to San Francisco -- and stands 26 feet tall, more than twice as high as the Berlin Wall. It has been called both the anti-terrorist fence and the racial separation wall. No words come to mind, however, as you walk on the streets of Bethlehem, Palestine. You do not need to delve deep; the wall's impact is visible in people's faces, faces that still smile at you as they pass by and go on with their lives.

Contemplating the soul-numbing injustices with which these people live, an urge to commit your life to the cause of Palestinian independence dominates you. But most likely you will move on too. It is only the Wall that stays -- it has uprooted olive trees, thwarted access to health care, cut through farmlands and villages, separated brothers and sisters, grandparents and grandchildren. It has been built to stay, to rise and stand tall, to cast its shadow on our humanity. Ironically, it is also on the streets of Bethlehem where a more just world is most imaginable. It is in Palestine that your heart dares to dream of peace, not in the long corridors of the United Nations headquarters where "peace" is a resolution yet to be passed.

The streets of Palestine are where free-spirited activists and artists have come to change the face of apartheid, to add the bright colors of their vision to the monochrome gray of the Wall. Through graffiti art and poetry, Palestine now owns the longest "living canvas of resistance and solidarity." The Persian-language verse of Ahmad Shamlu is found alongside Mahmoud Darwish's poignant poems in Arabic. "Nations United" written in English is right next to "This wall will fall, and I will return to claim my piece," in Spanish. Story after story of suffering is present, displaying the profound universality of the human condition. From a tombstone of the world imagined by the politics of "separate but equal," the Wall has been turned into a monument that summons, in every one of us, a sense of affinity and shared vulnerability, a monument that insists on the presence of lost lives.

Paul Ricoeur, the French philosopher, writes, "From the suffering Other, there comes a giving that is no longer drawn from the power of acting and existing, but precisely from weakness itself. What the suffering Other gives to he or she who shares this suffering is precisely the knowledge of shared vulnerability and the experience of the spontaneous benevolence required to bear that knowledge." The following selection includes work by Darwish, Palestine's most celebrated poet, as well as graffiti art and writing captured on the Wall. What do these latter expressions add to the discourse of Palestinian rights and suffering? They beautify a despised structure that some locals would prefer be left in its naked, repressive form. Where formal texts often distance us from the Palestinians' predicament and Israel's policies, graffiti art speaks to us with the same warmth and intensity one encounters in conversation with people on the streets of Hebron, Bethlehem, and Ramallah. Art may not change the reality on the ground in Palestine, but it is potent enough to turn an inhuman barrier into a living narrative that mirrors the best of a nation that still dares to dream.

***

Selections from Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Fady Joudah

The soldiers measure the distance between being and nonbeing
with a tank's scope...

**

Siege is the waiting
the waiting on a ladder leaning amid the storm

**

(to poetry:) besiege your siege

**

Do we harm anyone? Do we harm any
country, if we were stuck, even if from a distance,
just once, with the drizzle of joy?

We store out sorrows in our jars, lest the soldiers see them and celebrate the siege...

**

In Damascus:

the traveler sings to himself:

I return from Syria

neither alive

nor dead

but as clouds

that ease the butterfly's burden

from my fugitive soul

***

Selections from the Wall

For he himself is our

[PEACE]

who has made the two one and

has destroyed

the barrier

the dividing Wall

of hostility

-- Ephesians 2:14

[written for the oppressor]
The Wall is in your head

**

to exist
is to resist

-- Zapatista Army, Mexico

MADE IN USA

our revenge
will be the laughter
of our children

-- Bobby Sands, Northern Ireland

an eye
for an eye
leaves the
whole world
BLIND

a country is not
what it does
but also what
it tolerates

**

you look at me
and I look at you

**

what is this
teaching our children?

dream 

as if

you will

for ever

**

If I sit silently

I have sinned

-- Mohammad Mosaddegh, Iran

I have come to your land 

and I have recognized

shades of my own

my land was once

one where some people

imagined that they could build

their security on the insecurity of others

-- Faris Esack, South Africa

let never-smiling people rise 

let them rise

-- Ahmad Shamlu

The only peace Israel wants 

Is a piece of my land

Berlin 89 

Palestine?

***

Mahmoud Darwish was born in 1941 in al-Birweh, Palestine. During the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, his village was destroyed and his family fled to Lebanon. Darwish faced house arrest and imprisonment for his political activism and for publicly reading his poetry. He lived in exile for 26 years, between Beirut and Paris, until his return to Israel in 1996. Approximately 30 collections of his poetry and prose have been published, which have been translated into more than 22 languages. Darwish died in 2008 in Houston, Texas. (Retrieved from Poets.org.)

Further reading:
Against the Wall: The Art of Resistance in Palestine (Lawrence Hill Books, 2011), by William Parry. A stunning book of photographs that captures the impact of the apartheid wall on Palestinians.
The Butterfly's Burden (Copper Canyon Press, 2006), by Mahmoud Darwish, trans. Fady Joudah. A bilingual collection of the work of Palestine's national poet.
Banksy. Website of the British graffiti artist and political activist whose work has appeared on the streets of the world's slums and war-torn cities.


Via Tehran Bureau

Parastou Forouhar: Art, Life and Death in Iran

Turning tragedy into a source of creativity, or why art doesn’t have to be street art to be politically subversive.

by Maria Popova

One November evening in 1998, Iranian intellectuals and activists Dariush and Parvaneh Forouhar, supporters of the democratically elected Prime Minister, were savagely murdered in their home in Tehran. Their devastated daughter, Berlin-based artist Parastou Forouhar, channeled her grief in the language she spoke most fluently: art — powerful, poignant, subversive art that pulls you into its uncomfortable beauty with equal parts urgency and mesmerism. In, Parastou Forouhar: Art, Life and Death in Iran, London-based writer and curator Rose Issa has gathered some of Forouhar’s most provocative yet poetic work from the artist’s exhibitions in Germany, exploring everything from democracy to women’s rights to her partents’ brutal murder.

In a way, Forouhar’s work is the polar opposite of the loud, conspicuous, explicit messaging of Iran’s street art. Her soft colors and fluid shapes might lull you into their surface beauty…until you realize they depict scenes of torture and tragedy — living proof that art doesn’t have to be “street art” in order to be subversive and make compelling cultural commentary on even the most uncomfortable of subjects.

“When I arrived in Germany, I was Parastou Forouhar. Somehow, over the years, I’ve become ‘Iranian.’ This enforced ethnic identification took a new turn with the assassination of my parents in their home in Tehran. My efforts to investigate this crime had a great impact on my personal and artistic sensibilities. Political correctness and democratic coexistence lost their meaning in my daily life. As a result, I have tried to distill this conflict of displacement and transfer of meaning, turning it into a source of creativity.” ~ Parastou Forouhar

Images copyright Parastou Forouhar courtesy of Saqi Books

Via Brain Pickings

Audrey and Hannibal

[ personal history ] by Anita Alkhas

Besides his unfinished portrait of me, I don't have any of our father's oil paintings. But I do have the only one of our mother Audrey's that made it through dozens of moves, crossing the ocean at least four times. My sister Adrianne gave it to me and it is worth a lifetime of birthday gifts. Written on the back of the canvas is the name of a classroom at the Art Institute of Chicago (where my parents met in the mid-1950s), so it must have been painted as an assignment. Instead of a proper frame, it has four pieces of wood, one nailed to each side. The best kind of frame for an oil painting, according to Hannibal. I imagine he fashioned the frame for her, an early gesture of courtship.

Hannibal's parents sent him to Chicago to become a doctor like his maternal grandfather, who had gotten his degree in the U.S. There was a small, established Assyrian community there, including Hannibal's aunt Nelly, to help him settle in. She says he was a quick study -- like herself, in fact. Perhaps they were able to adjust so well to a new language and culture because they were already bilingual in Farsi and Modern Syriac and had grown up as minorities in Iran. Of course, Hannibal also had drive -- he soon dropped out of Loyola University and enrolled at the Art Institute, his personal ambitions overriding his obedience to his parents.

Audrey, a native Chicagoan and her parents' only surviving child, was getting her degree in art education. They were somewhat reassured that their unpredictable, artsy daughter had chosen a profession with at least a measure of practicality. But they didn't expect her to up and marry a foreigner and then move halfway across the world. As Ann, her best friend growing up, told me recently, it was always an adventure when you were with Audrey.

I like to sit and look at her painting. It's deceptively simple, depicting the façade of a Chicago row house, in deep red and black. Its geometric shapes -- rectangles, triangles, squares, arches, and a strip of black (sky?) across the top -- give it an abstract feel. I find it exciting and mysterious, yet familiar. It has the same red that dominated Hannibal's paintings for many years, all the way through the 1970s. She clearly had a strong influence on the development of his style; her contribution was even officially noted in an article on Hannibal's work by the writer and critic Jalal al-Ahmad. They were introduced to al-Ahmad and his wife, the writer Simin Daneshvar, by Hossein and Bettie Tavakoli, our close family friends since the 1950s. It was one of the first of their many encounters with Iranian intellectuals over the years.

After al-Ahmad's death, Hannibal painted a large canvas in tribute to him. It ran the length of the wall in the dining room of our house in Tehran, the first one we lived in after my sister was born. As I remember it, even though it had a sad subject, it was filled with bright colors, some straight from the tube: yellows, greens, blues, and occasional touches of deep crimson. Its different sections told many stories, and each time I looked at it, I would choose a corner to focus on and decode. I could never take it all in at the same time.

The house where it hung (on Heravi Street in the Saltanatabad district) was sprawling. It had been built as a summer residence, so it had no insulation. During the winter, we lived primarily in two rooms upstairs that we carpeted and heated by kerosene stoves. The rest of the year was another story. Our home always seemed to be filled with visitors (when we weren't out ourselves at other people's homes). It had an untended yard that stretched so far, you couldn't see the back wall. There was even a pool, but since it had no filtration system, the water was ice-cold for the first month of summer and then tadpoles would take it over. Audrey was never the "hostess with the mostest," as she put it, but she loved parties and had a laid-back, genuine acceptance of people that tended to disarm even the stiffer, stand-on-ceremony visitors who came. You might not get a decent estekan of tea, but you felt welcome all the same.

It occurs to me now that the al-Ahmad painting never hung in our subsequent homes. As inflation increased, the homes we lived in started to shrink, so there was no longer enough uninterrupted wall space for Hannibal's larger canvases. We lost our lease on the big house on Heravi when we went to the U.S. for our parents' sabbatical year (Audrey taught art at the Tehran American School and Hannibal was on the fine arts faculty at the University of Tehran). Upon our return, a generous friend let us live in his upstairs flat for little or no rent until we found an apartment we could afford. Our final family home was a basement, coincidentally on Heravi Street, a few blocks from our first. Although it was an actual basement, not a basement apartment, Audrey used her considerable talents to make it homey, inviting, and even aesthetically pleasing. My sister and I slept in what had been a storage room and our parents slept on the floor in the front room, along with the occasional visitor who decided to crash at our place, or sometimes our brother Buna when he was on leave from his Iranian military service. By proportion, or maybe even by actual numbers, the parties at the basement apartment seemed bigger (and wilder) than the parties we used to hold down the street.

I tell my students that each of us has a defining moment that splits our life into before and after. Mine is easy to pinpoint. Our parents' divorce and the Iranian Revolution happened the same year. When your parents divorce, you start trying to figure out just how far back things started to go wrong (I guess that's also true of a revolution). I used to think that it was a classic story of their upbringing kicking in harder as they aged, that their "irreconcilable differences" stemmed from clashing cultures rather than personalities. Were they doomed from the start? I wondered (I've always been rather over-dramatic, my family likes to tell me). But from what I've gleaned from old photos and letters, and the many stories friends and family have been offering up lately since our father's death last year, they seem to have had a surprisingly solid marriage for almost all of their 25 years together. Audrey had an unwavering belief in Hannibal's talent and the importance of his work and he trusted her exceptional eye and uncannily good taste in art. She was not ambitious herself and so never jealous of his success, nor even of his many female students and admirers. And, not least of all, they were both equally loving and fun-loving parents to the three of us.

Parents always loom large in the eyes of their children, but I think it's fair to say that Audrey and Hannibal often seemed larger than life, both individually and as a couple, to their many students, friends, and children of friends. I may be overstating the case, but I think they reflected a certain style of their time period and exerted a personal magnetism that was uncommon. They developed deep, long-lasting friendships and both of them later found fiercely loyal life partners. I don't know exactly what pressures broke them apart, but in the last year or so before the Revolution, I do know things had gotten a little out of hand, outside in the world and inside the marriage. Our life had become a bit too unstructured, even for Audrey. So she packed up and shipped off whatever belongings they agreed she could take, and left Iran with my sister and me.

Audrey's timing was eerily good, as it turned out. I like to think that she sensed we were arriving at the end of an era. Had she waited even a few months longer, she wouldn't have been able to take anything but memories with her. And that means I wouldn't have Audrey's painting in Hannibal's frame, their inviting home I can always enter, no matter what.

Via Tehran Bureau

The State: Social/Antisocial?

 

(L) Hesam Rahmanian,1000 Dollar Baby (I), 2010, Acrylic on canvas, 122x91 cm

(R) Hesam Rahmanian,1000 Dollar Baby (VI), 2010, Acrylic on paper, 77x57 cm

Opening this fall on September 21st (at The Third Line) and running through October 20th, 2011 several Iranian artists represented by The Third Line and Traffic will be exhibiting at the two spaces. The show attempts to question and discuss the state of the contemporary environment through artistic representations depicting social behavior, ecology, and psychology.

The State: Social/Antisocial? is inspired by and, a continuation from, previous shows at Traffic also titled ‘the state’. This exhibition resumes a dialogue explored earlier in shows held at Traffic: The State (2010), the inaugural exhibition, questioned the socio-political state post September 11; and The State: Uppers & Downers (2011) ran a commentary on the global condition, from an economic perspective, with the city of Dubai as a focal point. This third installment of investigation combines works from the collection of The Third Line, Traffic and The Farook Collection, and is exhibited at both galleries to connect the conversations previously limited to one physical space.

This exhibition aims to move beyond mere presentation and aspires to act as a forum on socialization and the current state of people and behavior. It also complements the launch of its online counterpart www.thestate.ae. With a focus on the various social aspects of the current “state” of today, the show puts a mirror up to the face of society for self-observation and self-reflection through the subjects of the works themselves, as well as the social, psychological and emotional impact on the viewers.

The works featured at both venues examine the social and human condition by posing questions about how society operates. Artists such as Arwa Abouon and Slavs and Tatars question belief in faith, tradition, and ritual; Fouad Elkoury, Hassan Hajjaj, Ahmed Mater, Hesam Rahmanian document the everyday in all its glory; Tracey Emin, Susan Hefuna, Damien Hirst, Huda Lutfi and Youssef Nabil depict emotional expression, nostalgia, and memory; and James Clar, Abdulnasser Gharem and Aman Mojadidi address the aspect of the anti-social.

The State: Social/Antisocial? takes the viewer on a journey of self discovery with the artworks at its starting point, contemplation as its road, and self revelation as its ultimate destination - defining society as individuals and as a collective.

Participating Iranian artists include: Abbas Akhavan, Amir H. Fallah, Laleh Khorramian, and Farhad Moshiri.

And showing at Traffic starting Thursday, Sept 22nd, will be Iranian artists Hesam Rahmanian, Mahmoud Bakhshi, Aman Mojadidi, Anahita Razmi, along with other international artists: Banksy, Damien Hirst, The Bruce High Quality Foundation, James Clar, Nada Dada, Tracey Emin, Shepard Fairey, Rami Farook, Abdulnasser Gharem, Hayv Kahraman, Ahmed Mater, Shaikha Al Mazrou, UBIK, Ayman Yossri, aka Daydban.

On September 22nd, at the show’s opening at Traffic, there will be a one-hour musical performance by Bunty (aka Kassia Zermon). Bunty is part of Brighton-based collective Beatabet. Using just her voice, fx pedals and a mash of real and made-up languages she whispers, beatboxes, claps, stamps and produces frenzied harmonies to create her music live from scratch.

About Traffic

Created by Rami Farook in 2007 as a social arts organization, to create, exhibit and exchange, Traffic’s 10,000sqft space combines commercial shows with public programming. It serves as a platform for emerging and established artists, from the region and beyond, and is the permanent home of The Farook Collection, which spans over 300 works. Other aspects of Traffic include an educational program, a bookstore and a ping-pong table.

Artists currently represented by Traffic include James Clar, Ayman Yossri aka Daydban, Abdulnasser Gharem, Ahmed Mater, Shaikha Al Mazrou, Aman Mojadidi, Hesam Rahmanian, Faisal Samra and UBIK.

About The Third Line

The Third Line is an art gallery that represents contemporary Middle Eastern artists locally, regionally and internationally in Dubai, UAE. The gallery organises non-profit, alternative programs including Kutub, a bi-lingual Arab literature appreciation circle and documentary and feature film screenings.

The Third Line’s publishing sector, Works on Paper, publishes books by associated artists from the region. Books published include Presence by Emirati photographer Lamya Gargash, In Absentia by Palestinian-Kuwaiti Tarek Al-Ghoussein, and most recently Cosmic Geometry by Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Karen Marta.

Represented artists include: Abbas Akhavan, Ala Ebtekar, Amir H. Fallah, Arwa Abouon, Babak Golkar, Ebtisam Abdulaziz, Farhad Moshiri, Fouad Elkoury, Golnaz Fathi, Hassan Hajjaj, Hayv Kahraman, Huda Lutfi, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Lamya Gargash, Laleh Khorramian, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Pouran Jinchi, Rana Begum, Shezad Dawood, Shirin Aliabadi, Slavs and Tatars, Susan Hefuna, Tarek Al-Ghoussein and Youssef Nabil.

Via Traffic and Persianesque Magazine

Parviz Tanavoli: Poet In Love

Exhibition and Panel Discussion

Exhibition:
21st September to 29th October 2011

Lecture and Panel Discussion:
22nd September 2011

Parviz Tanavoli is one of the most influential and pioneering artists of the Middle East. An artist–fabricator, teacher and collector, he was born in 1937 and lives and works between Iran and Canada. Tanavoli is a founder member of the Saqqakhaneh School (a school of art that derives inspiration from Iranian folk art and culture), a school that has been described as a 'spiritual Pop Art' and is now considered the inspiration for progressive modern Iranian art. His key work is the calligraphic figure of Heech (Nothingness), a recurring theme in his sculptural repertory which contains reference to the human figure, evident both in the upright sculptural forms and their titles.

The exhibition at Austin/Desmond Fine Art, his first solo show in Britain since 1960, distinguishes him as one of the finest draughtsmen of his generation. The works on display feature over thirty–five pieces including ceramics, fibreglass and bronze sculptures, paired with contemporary drawings, emphasising his abiding and joyful love for Persian architecture, culture and poetry.

DOWNLOAD EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

To mark this event, Tanavoli will participate in panel discussion held at The British Museum on 22nd September 2011, organized with the help of Iran Heritage Foundation and The British Museum.
DOWNLOAD FURTHER INFORMATION

Key works include: Prophets, Poets, Lovers, Wall, Lock, Hand and Bird along with calligraphic figure of Heech (Nothingness). These recurring themes in Tanavoli’s sculpture consistently contain references to the human figure, evident both in the upright sculptural forms and their titles. Tanavoli progressively replaces any descriptive figurative features with cultural symbols. This fusion of human and cultural emblems is an enduring characteristic of Tanavoli’s powerful sculptural statements.

Each work imbues special meaning like Persian poetry, which is more concerned with subjective interpretation of reality than with its external manifestations. It is this quality that is embraced in a wide range of works and revealed in Lovers, Beloved, Prophet and Poets. His signature series 'Heech' has found its place in various prestigious museums and galleries worldwide. Red Heech (below) is in the British Museum, London.

Tanavoli, at 74, is as productive as ever. The exhibition is drawn entirely from the artist’s collection and features a number of works never seen before.

He has taken part in several international group exhibitions and is one of the most popular artists at auctions. His work The Wall (Oh Persepolis) set an unbroken world auction record of 2.8 million dollars, for the sale of a work by a Middle Eastern artist at Christies Dubai, 30 April 2008.

Biography:

Parviz Tanavoli is an Iranian sculptor now residing in Canada. He was born in 1937 in Tehran where he remained until he graduated from Tehran’s School of Fine Arts in 1955. He then travelled to Italy where he continued his studies in Carrera and Milan. He later worked in Milan under Italian artist Marino Marini.

Upon graduating from the Brera Academy of Milan in 1959, he returned to Iran and won the Royal Awards in the 2nd Tehran Biennale in 1960. In the same year he founded his first studio, the Atelier Kaboud, which acted as both a studio space for him to work in as well as an exhibition space for him and other contemporaries.

Tanavoli taught sculpture for three years at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He then returned to Iran and assumed the directorship of the sculpture department at the University of Tehran, a position he held for 18 years until 1979, when he retired from teaching.

He has held solo exhibitions in Iran, Europe, Dubai, United States and Canada and participated in numerous biennales and group exhibitions including, Contemporary Art from the Islamic World, Barbican Centre, London, 1989; Continental Shift, Museums of Aachen, Maastricht, Heerlen and Liège, 2000; Picturing Iran: Art, Society and Revolution, Grey Art Gallery, New York, 2002; and Word into Art, British Museum, London, 2006.

His works are housed in international private and public collections, including The British Museum, London; Grey Art Gallery, New York Uni- versity Collection; Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota; Esfahan City Center; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Nelson Rockefeller Collection, New York; Museum of Modern Art, Vienna; Olympic Park, Seoul; DIFC, Dubai; and Royal Society of Fine Arts, Amman.

Heech and Cage V 2006, Edition of 6, Bronze, 38 x 14 x 13 cm; Literature: Parviz Tanavoli 'Monograph', 2009, illustrated p.307;  Exhibited: Meem Gallery 2009, Dubai.

Lovers II, 2011, Unique, Bronze, 35.5 x 14 x 10 cm.

Poet turning into Heech, 1973-2007,  Edition of 6, Bronze, 228 x 70 x 58 cm; Literature: Parviz Tanavoli 'Monograph', 2009, illustrated p.188; Exhibited: Meem Gallery 2009, Dubai.

Horizontal Heech Lovers, 2008,  Edition of 6, Bronze, 53 x 72 x 43 cm; Literature: Parviz Tanavoli 'Monograph', 2009, illustrated p.319.

 Via Iran Heritage Foundation and Austin/Desmond Fine Art

Modern and Contemporary Arab and Iranian art on sale at Sotheby's London

Sotheby’s London announced a sale of Modern and Contemporary art by Arab and Iranian artists will take place on Tuesday, 4 October 

 Left: Bahman Mohasses's "Untitled"; Middle: Hadieh Shafie's "10450 Pages"; Right: Ferhad Moshiri's "Blue Dome"

Comprised of 123 lots, the sale will include major works by leading modern masters such as Louay Kayyali, Fateh Moudarres and Aref el Rayess, as well as key pieces by some of the foremost contemporary artists, among them Farhad Moshiri, Ziad Antar and Yousef Nabil.

The sale will also be highlighted by seven Iraqi works, including a work by Jawad Salim. The sale is expected to realise in excess of £2.5 million.

Following on from the success of Sotheby’s 2010 Contemporary Arab and Iranian sale, Sotheby’s will present two works by Sohrab Sepehri and Bahman Mohasses. Mohasses’s Untitled (estimated £50,000- 70,000) provides an enlightening perspective into the isolated nature of Mohasses' disposition. He felt confined by his Iranian identity when he was living in Rome and by developing his distinct style, he fell further into fashioning fresco-style paintings juxtaposed with harsh realism.

Sohrab Sepehri’s Tree Trunks Series was painted during a spell in New York. The trees were a solace to the artist and became an escape from the hustle of Manhattan and the pressures on his time. One of the most highly acclaimed and reserved of Iran's modern masters, Sohrab Sepehri, poet and artist, has left an indelible mark on the Iranian art scene. His Untitled from this important series, is estimated at £200,000-300,000.

A group of three distinct works by Farhad Moshiri represent three stages in the artist’s personal artistic development. An early work by Moshiri, Blue Dome (From the Persian Motif Series) was painted at a time of hopefulness and perhaps rediscovery, when Iran was opening up to the West. This work is estimated at £60,000-80,000.  Space Station is one of Moshiri's most striking hand embroidered works to come to public auction. Estimated at £100,000- 150,000, Space Station epitomises the artist’s experimentation in juxtaposing the crafts of Iran with the modernity of the West.

The third work by Moshiri is his 9's On Yellow, estimated at £150,000-250,000.

A very exciting work in the New Artists component of the sale is Iranian artist Hadieh Shafie’s 10450 Pages, estimated at £4,000-6,000. Process, repetition and time are all essential to Shafie’s oeuvre; all of which is rooted in the influence of Islamic arts and crafts. Shafie has been shortlisted for this year's Jameel Prize to be awarded at The Victoria and Albert Museum in London at the end of September.

Also included in the sale is Iranian artist Navid Nuur, who exhibited in this year's Arsenale at the Venice Biennale, showing two works from the same series as the present work. Inspired by the monochrome works of artists such as Anish Kapoor and Mark Rothko, Nuur observed that these artworks all feed from a certain eye coordination movement; the same movement used when looking at any single monochrome work. His Study (From The Eye Codex Of The Monochrome Series), executed in 1984-2010, is a unique work estimated at £3,000-4,000.

A particular highlight is the appearance of Scratching on Things I Could Disavow Parts 2 & 3 by leading Lebanese artist Walid Raad, whose work focuses on researching, documenting and preserving the contemporary history of Lebanon. Scratching on Things I Could Disavow Parts 2 & 3 is estimated at £15,000-20,000.

Sotheby’s sale of Modern and Contemporary Arab and Iranian Art will offer seven works by seven Iraqi artists, collectively estimated at £182,000-248,000. Artists working in Iraq, in the 1970s were notably active in the art world, exhibiting in Biennales and creating excitement across the Arab world and beyond.

Highlighting the Iraqi Art component is Jawad Salim, a decisive figure in the Iraqi movement. His Portrait Of A Girl (circa 1950), is estimated at £70,000-90,000. His capacity to create remarkable sculptures and paintings inevitably led to his impact on the history of Iraqi art.

A further highlight from the Iraq component of the sale is Dia Azzawi’s Visit Of Al Kassim  (est. £20,000-30,000).

The sale will also include a section of 10 Contemporary Iranian works donated by artists which will be sold to benefit children’s charity Kids Company. Founded by Camila Batmanghelidjh in 1996, the charity provides practical, emotional and educational support to vulnerable children and young people. Kids Company have a hugely successful arts programme, encompassing visual arts, new media, fashion, music, drama and dance.

Via Ahram Online

Art museum to open in Dubai to counter dearth of cultural knowledge

By Colin Simpson, The National
 

Ramin Salsali, who originally turned to collecting to relieve stress, says that by getting to know an artist in person he gains a deeper understanding of his or her work. Pawan Singh

Dubai's rapidly developing cultural landscape will gain another important landmark in September when a new art museum throws open its doors in the city.

The Salsali Private Museum will showcase contemporary pieces owned by Ramin Salsali, an Iranian collector who divides his time between Dubai and Germany, along with exhibitions of other work.

The museum will be located at Al Serkal Avenue, Al Quoz, close to many of the contemporary art galleries that have helped to give Dubai its distinctive cultural identity.

Yet it was the lack of knowledge about the Middle Eastern art world among visitors that was one of the factors that made Salsali decide the UAE needed a museum.

"Dubai became my second home and I developed patriotic feelings for it," he says. "So I suffered very much when I heard comments from my European friends who came here for a holiday. All of them complained about one issue - they said, 'What can you do in Dubai except go to the beach or shopping, where is the culture here?' "

Recognising that there was this dearth of knowledge about Middle Eastern art, especially contemporary work, made Salsali consider how it might be addressed.

"I came to a point where I had to decide what I should do with my collection," he says. "Should I keep it for myself or show it to a wider public? And then it was a question that I wanted to show it, but there wasn't space for me to show it."

Before deciding to go ahead with the Dubai project he considered opening a museum in Germany that would promote Middle Eastern art, but this plan became bogged down in bureaucracy.

"In Europe you have to go through bureaucratic issues," he says. "Not that you are not going through that in Dubai, but it's less, it's smaller. You have better communication with the authorities and when they listen to your ideas they support you and are not creating another obstacle on top, as sometimes you face in Europe."

Salsali started to look at spaces in Dubai and settled on a warehouse in Al Quoz. It is currently being converted for use as a museum, and he expects to take delivery of the building within two weeks and will then start installing some of the 500 pieces he owns, half of them by Iranian artists.

He plans to stage up to three exhibitions a year of selections from his collection. There will also be space for shows of work owned by other collectors or by art groups. The first booking has already been taken, from a UK group called Magic of Persia, which will mount an exhibition next March. There will be no admission charge for visitors to the museum.

Salsali hopes his venture will inspire other collectors and art lovers to follow his example and open more display spaces.

"If even one person does that, it will be a big success for us," he says. "We would like to create a space where when any person comes in they say, 'Oh, this is so easy to do, why haven't I done it before?' The next step is to come to us and say, 'How did you do it?' We can advise them and show them, free of charge, how they can set up spaces, and Dubai can become a centre for collections."

Salsali, 45, was born in Tehran and, after attending school in the UK and Iran, went on to study economics and management in Germany. He became a consultant in the petrochemical industry, advising on the use of new and environment-friendly technology. He began collecting while still in his 20s, and art soon became a passion as he found it provided an escape from the pressures of his work.

"I am interested in any type of art, I have not limited myself or focused myself," he says. "I've bought what I liked to buy, I never had a strategy. It mostly happens that I get to know the artists. At the beginning art did not speak to me, I didn't have any connection to the art. But by knowing the artist, knowing the personality of the artist, I developed a relation to the work of the artist at the same time."

A particular favourite is the Iranian Sara Rahbar, and his collection includes several pieces in which she combines the US flag with strips of patterned eastern fabrics.

"They show the unification of the orient with America," he says. "I like Sara very much. She's now very well-known worldwide, she's in big collections. Another Iranian is Reza Derakhshani, I have five of his works and he's one of my favourite artists. When I met him I found him an amazing personality."

Major European names in the collection include Daniel Richter, Niki de Saint Phalle, Philip Mueller, Gil Heitor Cortesão and Jonathan Meese, while the list of Arab artists includes Majida Khattari, Shawki Youssef, Jeffar Khaldi, Halim Al Karim and Chaza Charafeddine. Emirati artists include Hazem Mahdy and Fatima Al Mazroui.

Salsali has twice been honoured in the Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Patrons of the Arts Awards, and the museum project has won praise from the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority.

"Patrons of the arts are the building blocks that spark the creativity of artists, strengthening the cultural and artistic infrastructure of a city," says the director of projects, Salem Belyouha. "The inauguration of Mr Salsali's art museum signifies how creative ventures play an instrumental role in energising the arts scene. We are confident that he will continue to contribute significantly to shape the cultural dynamic of Dubai."

Salsali adds: "This museum should be understood as a place for showing art, and that's it, not more than that. We're not claiming fame, we're not trying to make a point. It is a very simple place, a place where you lose your barriers and fears."

Via The National

An Afternoon with Iranian Animator Noureddin ZarrinKelk

Event Date: 09/25/2011 - 2:00pm - 5:00pm 

Event location: University Park Campus, Norris Theatre, Los Anagels, CA

The USC School of Cinematic Arts invites you to participate in a retrospective screening and conversation with Noureddin ZarrinKelk, widely regarded as the father of Iranian animation. The event will include the North American premiere of his most recent film, Bani Adam.
Noureddin ZarrinKelk was born into a family of traditional Persian painters and calligraphers. In fact his last name means “Golden Pen” in Persian. But Noureddin, affectionately called Noori, also had a daring eye for adapting modern subjects, and perhaps it was also his fate to reimagine this 13th-century art form in a new light, as Noor means “light.”

He started his career at 16, drawing caricatures for Iranian magazines. After earning a Ph.D. in pharmacology, he worked as an illustrator trying to change the long-held tradition of imageless textbooks in Iran. While working at Iran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, Noori saw how animated film can engage young audiences. He went to Belgium to study animation with Raoul Servais and was soon making films for children. He has since advanced Iranian animation almost singlehandedly by founding the country’s first animation school in 1974 and Iran’s branch of the International Animated Film Society in 1987.

Noori possesses a special humor which exists in all of his work. In The Mad, Mad, Mad World (1975), he portrays each continent on the globe transforming into a variety of animals barking or squawking at neighboring countries. But Noori is hesitant to speak about Iranian politics. Instead he works to encode profound political and social messages in his films, while sharing the culture and history of his country with a worldwide audience. His films express the need for global peace and understanding. In his latest film, Bani Adam (2011), he brings together world leaders to recite a poem by 13th-century Persian poet Sa’adi about our common humanity.

Throughout his career, Noureddin ZarrinKelk has helped to find a distinct place for animation and graphic art in the broad field of painting. And Iranian artists are increasingly recognized and received with great respect worldwide, in large part because of Nouredddin’s persistence and hard work. His creativity in animation and graphics is interwoven with powerful peculiarities of Iranian art and soul, making him one of the most renowned representatives of his country. At the same time, his art, with universal values, designates him as an artist of the world.

Sponsored by the USC School of Cinematic Arts, John C. Hench Animation and Digital Arts, Interactive Media Division, and SoCiArts: Socially Conscious Arts.

For more information, contact Lisa Mann at emann@usc.edu or 213-740-2804 or Kurosh ValaNejad at kvalanejad@cinema.usc.edu or 310-488-6830. For further information on this event:
visionsandvoices@usc.edu

Via SoCiArts.com

Many tunes, many messages

A reflection of the ways in which music comments on political and socio-cultural issues   

By Jyoti Kalsi

Snail Fever is an art exhibition about music. And curator Sara Mameni has an interesting reason for the intriguing title. "Legendary Egyptian singer Abdul Halim Hafez died of bilharzia, also known as snail fever. His death in 1977 has symbolically marked the end of the ‘Golden Age' of Arabian music. Going back to the 1940s, this era produced classical singers such as Umm Kulthum, Abdul Wahab and Fairouz. It was a time of political change across the Middle East and the music of these great icons became the sound of reconfigured identities, nation states and fights for freedom.

"The golden age of classical music was followed by the modern, urban sounds of Arabpop, which touched a chord with a new generation and spread like a virus throughout the region. The idea behind this exhibition was to study the relationship people in this region have with music today and to examine its link with national identity in contemporary times. The title pays tribute to Hafez and music's golden age. It also alludes to the contagious nature of popular music and to the fact that in some countries in this region music is viewed almost like a disease that must be avoided," Mameni says.

The United States-based Iranian art critic and curator is at present working on her PhD on contemporary Middle Eastern art, and the idea for this show was inspired by her research into the art, sounds and revolutions of the past. Mameni invited several artists from around the region to explore the emotions and notions connected with music. And their works present various personal, political and cultural interpretations of our relationship with music.

US-based Iranian artist Abbas Akhavan looks at music and musicians from the point of view of an exile. His artwork, titled Greener Pastures, shows a picture of what looks like a large Iranian family enjoying a picnic in a park. But a closer look reveals that the people in the picture are all well-known Iranian musicians who left the country after the revolution in 1979. The nostalgic piece speaks about the pain of exile, suggesting that musical icons become a substitute for the family that one cannot visit and their songs become an important element of national identity. The artwork also comments on how politics affect a nation's socio-cultural environment.

For Newsha Tavakolian, music represents cultural repression. Her video, titled Listen, shows various Iranian women singing on what looks like a glittering stage. But their voices have been completely muted, making a strong statement about the restrictions on music and on women in general in her country.

In contrast, Cypriot artist Christodoulos Panayiotou's video, Slow Dance Marathon, is a humorous look at music's ability to make people forget their inhibitions and connect with one other. The artist organised a slow dance marathon and photographed various couples, who did not know each other, dancing together at the event. His camera captures the passion that music and dance ignite between strangers and comments on the social, cultural and political borders that divide people and the power of music to unite.

Ala'a Ebtekar examines the role of music in cultural hybridisation. His installation, comprising a tablecloth, a boom-box and a pair of sneakers, combines traditional Iranian artistic motifs, 19th-century Iranian café culture and elements of American pop culture to represent modern Iranian youth, who are influenced by the West but are also looking to reconnect with their history and heritage.

The title, Electric Del Roba, is itself a hybrid of the boom-box and the dilroba, a traditional Iranian musical instrument.

Cypriot artist Haris Epaminonda also looks at the American influence on international pop culture in her video installation titled Gramophone. The video features a still photograph and several clippings from Egyptian soap operas with American background music. Interestingly, this music was the first song used in an Egyptian film. The artwork thus alludes to the contagious, viral nature of music and makes a larger socio-political statement about Western influence on regional media and culture.

Kuwaiti artists Fatima Al Qaderi and Khalid Al Gharaballi are interested in the notion of celebrity and cultural icons. The two New York-based artists have redesigned the covers of albums by popular and controversial Middle Eastern stars Haifa Wehbe and Nancy Ajram to examine how these female icons are presented to the public and how they are viewed by different people.

Rayyane Tabet's work, Sherihan, Sherihan, Let Down Your Hair, also explores the idea of stardom and the fairytale-like image of a diva. The Lebanese artist has done a lot of research on the life of Egyptian singer and actress Sherihan, who was famous for her beautiful hair. He is displaying pages from a book he has written that retells the story of Rapunzel, with Sherihan replacing the fairytale character.

Slavs and Tatars, a group that includes Iranian and European artists, has taken the theme quite literally to examine the political connotations of music. They have written and composed an album titled Hymns of No Resistance, which contains songs that are meant to be anthems for nations that do not exist. Their song for this show, Stuck in Ossetia With You, refers to the region in Georgia and takes a witty look at the role of music in forging a national identity.

Jyoti Kalsi is a Dubai-based art enthusiast.

Snail Fever will run at The Third Line gallery until July 28.

Via gulfnews

Monir Farmanfarmaian: 'In Iran, life models wear pants'

John Cage called her 'that beautiful Persian girl' and Andy Warhol kept her work on his desk. Monir Farmanfarmaian tells Laura Barnett about New York, exile – and finally making it at 87

‘Maybe I deserve to win’ … Farmanfarmaian, who is nominated for the V&A’s Jameel prize.

By Laura Barnett , guardian.co.uk

 

In 1944, Monir Shahroudy decided to move from Tehran to Paris to become a painter. There was just one small obstacle for the 20-year-old to overcome: the second world war. The French consulate informed her that moving to occupied Paris was, sadly, impossible; as was her alternative plan of waiting out the war in Morocco, which was still under German attack. But Shahroudy was undeterred: she resolved to move to America, and from there to Paris once peace was declared.

She secured a place on an American battleship bound from Mumbai to California; from there, she travelled east to New York, arriving in 1945. She never made it to Paris, but she did make it as an artist. Now 87, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (the second surname is that of her late husband) has been making art for five decades, and is widely recognised as one of the most influential artists working in Iran today.

She is currently having something of a moment: Monir, a doorstop of a book co-edited by Serpentine Gallery director Hans Ulrich Obrist, will be published in the autumn; and she is among 10 artists and designers nominated for the Victoria and Albert Museum's Jameel prize. Set up in 2009, the £25,000 prize is awarded to contemporary artists inspired by traditional Islamic design techniques; the winner will be announced in September.

Farmanfarmaian's art has encompassed many forms, from simple paintings of flowers and birds to unsettling "memory box" installations reminiscent of the oeuvre of Louise Bourgeois. But her largest, and most compelling, body of work combines two techniques from traditional Islamic design: mirror mosaic, in which fragments of mirror and coloured glass are laid in plaster to create intricate geometric patterns; and reverse glass painting, where images are carefully painted on to sheets of glass that are then viewed from the other side. These works are often large in scale and exquisitely beautiful, each sliver of glass catching and refracting the light like the teeming images inside a giant kaleidoscope.

Mirror mosaics have decorated the interiors of Iranian shrines and palaces since the 16th century. On the phone from Tehran – where she returned to live permanently in 2004 – Farmanfarmaian explains how she became fascinated with the technique. "Around 1971, I went to a certain shrine [in Iran]," she says, "and I became very awed with the way the mirror pieces were reflecting back images of the people there – the beggars, the holy men. It was so beautiful, so magnificent. I was crying like a baby."

Her first stay in New York lasted 12 years; she studied at Cornell University and Parsons School of Design, and worked as a fashion illustrator. It was an eye-opening time: she drew fully naked life models for the first time ("In Iran, the men always wore short pants," she says, "but at Parsons, the model was competely naked; he would always look at me and wink"), and fell in with a social group that included Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman and Frank Stella. They instilled her lifelong interest in modernism – the influence of which sits fascinatingly in her art. "It was amazing [to know all these people]," she says. "I loved it. Even though I was just painting flowers and designing fashion, I loved these modern things."

In looks, Farmanfarmaian falls somewhere between Frida Kahlo and Audrey Hepburn; she was often asked to sit for portraits, and the composer John Cage once described her as "that beautiful Persian girl". Also among her friends was a shy young fellow illustrator named Andy Warhol, from whom she bought several sketches of shoes. In exchange, she gave Warhol a small mirrorball, which he always kept on his desk.

She returned to Iran in 1957, but after the Islamic revolution of 1979, which saw the vast majority of her works confiscated, sold or destroyed, she spent another 10 years in New York. During her years in Iran, she had to persuade craftsmen to work with her who were distinctly uncomfortable about taking their orders from a woman (though you imagine, talking to Farmanfarmaian, that she could persuade anyone through the sheer force of her charm). But she thinks her nationality has been more of an obstacle, at least internationally, than her gender. "In America, after the revolution, after the [Gulf] war, nobody wanted to do anything with Iran," she says. "None of the galleries wanted to talk to me. And after September 11 – my God. No way. Rather than being a woman, it was difficult just being Iranian."

Farmanfarmaian still works in her studio every day from 9.30am to 1.30pm, and wishes she could manage longer: "I'm old," she says, "but my mind is much younger." But she still appears somewhat bemused by the fact that she has found such success as an artist. "I never took myself seriously," she says. "I had no hope that I would be one of [the nominees for the Jameel prize], out of so many artists. But," she adds with a mischievous cackle, "maybe I do deserve to win it, when I am 87 years old."

• The Jameel prize 2011 is at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London SW7 (020-7942 2000) from 21 July to 25 September; the winner will be announced on 12 September. Monir is published in the autumn by Damiani Editore.

Via guardian.co.uk

From war to hyperreal art

Infinite Freedom Exercise (near Abadan, Iran), 2011
Lincoln Square, Manchester, UK
24 hours a day until 17 July

Sited outdoors in the city centre, John Gerrard’s new piece Infinite Freedom Exercise (near Abadan, Iran) is an infinitely evolving hyper realistic virtual world, played out 24 hours a day. On the screen is a single figure, dressed in generic army fatigues, moving continuously through a series of exercises against the backdrop of a Persian landscape. Using 3D motion scanning, the exercises are captured from movement created in collaboration with award-winning choreographer Wayne McGregor. The result is a compelling and unsettling reflection on modernity, portraiture and history.

Image: John Gerrad

Chelsea Ward, contributor

A new video installation by John Gerrard uses top-quality motion-capture graphics to present a soldier eternally training in the Iranian desert

WHEN artist John Gerrard set out to create real-time virtual worlds, he and his team evaluated the top video games - and found them lacking.

"Movement was crap, basically," Gerrard says. "Even the very high-end, huge-budget games had flaws in their motion." Gamers don't mind these small flaws, Gerrard says, because they are of little importance compared with the plot. In his artwork, however, there is no plot: "The narrative is the motion."

Gerrard's outdoor LED wall installation at the Manchester International Festival, Infinite Freedom Exercise (near Abadan, Iran), 2011, displays a soldier continuously performing about 160 dance-like motions in an Iranian desert landscape, beneath a sun that rises and sets on Iranian local time.

Despite the starting point of Gerrard's research, there is nothing very game-like or even movie-like about his work, which might be better compared to scientific simulations. Gerrard sets the parameters and then simply lets the scene evolve. At a 2009 exhibition of his work in New York, curator and art historian Linda Norden described it as a way "to visualise a past-into-future epic history painting: something that unfolds in real time and extends into a future that we can't yet know".

If viewers are to engage with the piece, it has to look real - or, more accurately, hyperreal, says Gerrard. They might just dismiss it if the graphics are bad. The video games he had looked at used the popular technique of "skeletal animation", which is based on the movement of a character's bones and joints, but is limited when it comes to the look of skin, muscles and other "deformations".

So he and his team decided on a different approach, one that would look as good as a Hollywood film - think Gollum in The Lord of the Rings - even though it risked being too data-heavy for real-time action. First, using a 3D motion-capture system, his team recorded dancer Davide de Pretore performing movements derived from the duck-and-cover positions that real soldiers take during mortar-firing exercises.

Then, in an adaptation of a technique called "morph target animation", they translated each move into a frame-by-frame series of dense "meshes" consisting of about 100,000 points. Each of these could then be manipulated to make the virtual soldier look just as Gerrard would like - a portrait of sorts. At his studio in Vienna, Austria, last month, Gerrard and his team were still fine-tuning the soldier's look and movements. They hadn't yet done his hands, which dangled woodenly - a strange sight.

The soldier moves within an equally meticulously modelled virtual landscape - complete with 365 days of accurate light conditions - that Gerrard photographed in 2008 on a trip to Iran, inspired by a 1980 photo from the Iran-Iraq war. The point of view comes from a virtual camera orbiting the soldier.

The work is too much of a mash-up of times, places and people to be interpreted as a commentary on any specific conflict, but it is obviously a critique of violence and power. In a way, it is also a product of the violence that it is critiquing, since many gaming technologies have military origins. Even the lab in Prague, Czech Republic, that performed the 3D motion capture deals mainly in military applications.

Although Gerrard holds a master's in computer science, he no longer does any programming. He directed the work, while his producer, Werner Pötzelberger, coordinated the team of programmers. It took a team of eight about five months to create. Among their tasks was creating a custom solution to handle the piece's whopping 300 gigabytes of animation data and streaming rate of 100 megabytes per second.

This team-oriented production model comes from the world of computer science, not art, Gerrard says. And that's not all that makes him an outsider in the art world. In fact, as a real-time virtual artist, Gerrard is basically alone, Norden says, "like the mad scientist".

John Gerrard talks about his new MIF project 'Infinite Freedom Exercise'

Via Manchester International Festival and New Scientist