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.

Waiting for the Sun

‘Day and night I tore myself to shreds so the sun would come – it didn’t come’

 

L-R: Alfredo Caceres, Hamed Nikpay, Hussain Jiffry & Farzin Farzad. Photo courtesy Javad Nikpour and REORIENT.

by Joobin Bekhrad, REORIENT

For three hot, sticky, and otherwise unbearable summer days in July, a motley crew of Iranians from around the globe descended on Toronto’s sleepy Harbourfront Centre to put the ‘Tehran’ back into Tehranto. For its third edition, the Tirgan festival gathered together artists, musicians, performers, scholars, and myriad other pundits from various disciplines for what has now become the world’s largest celebration of Iranian arts & culture outside Iran. Kicking off this year’s theme of ‘hope’ – which some may have regarded as a reflection of the dire state of Iranian international relations, or of a spirit of optimism regarding Iran’s political future – was Siavash Shabanpour’s operatic rendition of Arash the Archer, based on the late Siavash Kasraii’s poetic retelling of the ancient Iranian myth. To the clash of symbols and the occasional clack of a beer can cutting through the thick veil of humidity that summer’s eve, a colourful crowd of awestruck, sweat-drenched onlookers witnessed the timeless trial of one of Iran’s most noble sons against the warriors of Turan, which brought forth a renewed spirit of nationalism, pride, and, true to the festival’s adopted theme, hope; and thus, with a bang (literally), the kabab-infused festivities began.

Gutted at having missed Paris-based Shahrokh Moshkin-Ghalam’s dance interpretation of a selection of love stories from the Shahnameh (the Persian ‘Book of Kings’ epic) for the second time due to the bane of typical Toronto traffic – which the influx of Iranians did nothing to assuage whatsoever – I arrived at Harbourfront a good three hours before a concert by Hamed Nikpay, consoling myself with the fact that I’d have plenty of time to explore the communal delights the festival had to offer. After picking up a bit of Persian swag at the pop-up bazaar on the green (sans bargains, alas), and a spanking-new copy of Hamid Rahmanian’s new version of the Shahnameh, I caught a lecture on classical Iranian music by the eccentric Lloyd Miller, a somewhat familiar name in the jazz lexicon. Although captivated at first by the 70-something’s colourful anecdotes about performing in pre-Revolution Iran and his remarks about identifying as an Iranian (though he lamented not having ‘the cool hair or the cool skin’), he later lost me with some dubious remarks about the origins of Persian music and misplaced praise for various figures in Iranian history. The juvenile spirit of my university days still flowing strong within me, I slipped out as inconspicuously as possible (having only had to walk past a camera or two) back into the heat, ticket in hand, in pursuit of Agha Hamed.

Calligraffiti

Deitch Takes Another Look at ‘Calligraffiti’ for New York Gallery

Leila Pazooki, This Is Not Green, 2009,  Illuminated neon tubes,  19.29 x 78.74 in / 49 x 200 cm. Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery.

by Carol Kino, The ArtsBeat, New York Times

Last month Jeffrey Deitch resigned as the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Although he won’t step down immediately, the art world is abuzz with rumors about what he’ll do next. Perhaps a clue to his future interests may be found  in “Calligraffiti: 1984-2013,” an upcoming show at the Leila Heller Gallery in Chelsea opening Sept. 5.

It will explore the relationship between graffiti and calligraphy with the work of nearly 50 artists, from Jackson Pollock and Jean-Michel Basquiat to Keith Haring and his protégé “LA II” (as Angel Ortiz is known). Many of the artists are Middle Eastern, including Shirin Neshat and Hossein Zenderoudi, and several are street artists, like the French-Tunisian star eL Seed.

The show essentially updates “Calligraffiti,” an exhibition that he and Ms. Heller collaborated on in 1984, back when he was a Citibank art adviser with a passion for street art, and she was an Upper East Side dealer specializing in art from the Middle East, primarily Iran.

Iran Modern

Video: 57 Images of Amazing Pre-Revolution Iranian Art in 28 Seconds

by Tahiat Mahboob, Asia Society

On September 6, Asia Society Museum unveils a landmark exhibition, Iran Modern, featuring artwork from painters, photographers, designers, and sculptors created during the three decades leading up to the 1979 revolution.

Together, these unique and extraordinary pieces offer a fresh look at 20th-century Iranian cultural history — a period when Iranian artists engaged with the world through the Tehran Biennial in Iran and overseas exhibitions. Institutions both in Iran and around the world collected their works.

Enjoy an advance look at this groundbreaking exhibition in the video above.

Modern and Contemporary Iranian Art, On Display and In Demand

Masters of Persian, Reza Derakshani (2008). Mixed media on canvas.  Courtesy Muftah.

by Nima Shirazi, Muftah

An upcoming exhibition at the Asia Society in New York City will highlight over 100 pieces of pre-revolution Iranian art – paintings, photography, drawing and sculpture – created by “the most noteworthy Iranian artists of the 1950s to 1970s” compiled to “shed light on a period when Iranian artists were engaged with the world through the Tehran Biennial in Iran as well as exhibitions overseas, and when their work was collected by institutions inside and outside of Iran.”

The landmark loan exhibition, entitled Iran Modern and running from September 6, 2013 to January 5, 2013, “maps the genesis of Iranian modernism in order to argue that the development of modernist art is inherently more globally interconnected than previously understood” and “provides a dynamic perspective on Iran’s rich culture and history for the public.”

Meanwhile, a recent article in Art Radar Asia, an online magazine that tracks contemporary art trends, calls Iran “one of the most prolific and productive countries for contemporary art” in the Middle East and identifies eight innovative, influential and internationally-renowned Iranian artists of the past 35 years.

Included in Art Radar‘s list and accompanied by concise and illuminating blurbs about their work are photographer Abbas Kowsari, abstract calligrapher Golnaz Fathi, and painters Afshin Pirhashemi, Alireza Adambakan, and Babak Roshaninejad.

Here is an excerpt:

Phoenix

by Molly Brodak, Guernica

Leeuwenhoek was a draper with soft brown hair cut in two sloping planes like collie ears.

Close up he saw threads and then worldthreads and what was inside of that?

He held a rod of soda glass in flame until it pulled apart into whiskers.

The whisker tips tinked off into mini orbs, eyes and eyes upon his eye.

He saw kind rich men walking through the dark as if through a city.

Their silk ties lifting in wind. And tender underneath.

Phone wires bowing like sails. Skin smell and mush smell of roses.

A radio helplessly beaming horror whistles from Jupiter.

A girl holding a hair-threaded needle.  

Imagine what must be very far away, he thought,

very very far away!

The Sincere Art

In Memory of Sadegh Tirafkan, Iranian artist and photographer

Sadegh Tirafkan, Iranian Man, 2000, digital photo, edition 5 of 6, 64×48 cm. Courtesy AB Gallery Luzern & Zürich and ArtAsiaPacific.

by Mehran Mohajer, ArtAsiaPacific

This past May, the Iranian art community mourned the loss of Sadegh Tirafkan, one of the country’s “new art movement” pioneers, to brain cancer at the age of 47. Known for his innovative blending of photography with other artistic media, Tirafkan was an early proponent of photo-based art in Iran and a prominent international representative of Iranian contemporary art.

Born in Karbala, Iraq, to Iranian parents in 1965, Tirafkan spent his childhood and adolescence in Ahwaz, southern Iran, where he volunteered to join the Iranian army during the war between Iran and Iraq (1980–1988). His early experiments in theater and filmmaking as a teenager led him to apply for a degree in photography at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran on leaving the army. After graduating in 1990, Tirafkan remained committed to developing his own visual idiom, and it was this that set him apart from the many artists whose practices were informed by official narratives, or who were pursuing the dominant current of war-oriented documentary photography.

Though Tirafkan’s early works may ostensibly appear to be documentary in nature, the level of dramatic expression betrays a subconscious tendency toward staging, which can be attributed to his cinematic eye. Tirafkan adopted a method of “constructed photography,” combining the photographic image with hints of painting, a practice developed in tandem with his experiments in new media. His friendship with the painter Parvaneh Etemadi also had a strong impact on his work.

While the exploration and use of traditional Iranian imagery is perhaps common among Iranian artists today, Tirafkan should be credited as one of this style’s originators. Choosing historic sites like Persepolis and Susa as his settings and referencing Iranian post-Islamic history—the Ashura ceremony, Iranian ritual champion wrestling, miniature painting and carpet motifs—Tirafkan introduced themes such as the traditional identity versus the modern identity, notions of the self and the problematizing of male psyche.

Chasing the Butterfly

7 September - 12 October 2013

 

Nicky Nodjoumi, Inspector's Scrutiny, 2012, Oil on Canvas, 85 x 130 in / 215.9 x 330.2 cm. Courtesy of Taymour Grahne Gallery.

This September, Taymour Grahne Gallery opens its doors with an inaugural exhibition by acclaimed Iranian painter Nicky Nodjoumi. Featuring large-scale oil paintings in the main gallery and works on paper in the lower gallery, Chasing the Butterfly and Other Recent Paintings explores Nodjoumi’s surreal hybridization of historic and contemporary imagery intercut with sharp political commentary.

Born 1942, in Kermanshah, Iran and based in New York since 1981, Nodjoumi uses his practice to explore the intersection of his personal history with the politics of alienation and dislocation.  Combining historic references, social realist critique and surrealist abstraction, his compositions feature multi-layered human figures engaged with bizarrely counter-poised animals, theatrically staged against indeterminate backdrops and barren landscapes.

Not unlike the work of the German Social Realist Neo Rauch, Nodjoumi’s paintings suggest the intention of a narrative reading, but are instead cryptic and open-ended.  In Inspector’s Scrutiny, 2012, warriors from traditional Persian miniatures join with anonymous suited men in the struggle to tether and subjugate a supine horse, creating a scene that is both politically charged and ambiguously unresolved. Nodjoumi’s figures are continually spliced and rejoined on fractured registers with mismatched proportions, a spatial discrepancy that heightens the work’s disjointed layering of history and identity. Underlining this jarring sense of removal from reality and providing material textuality to the work are the artist’s sketches and clippings, also on display.

This uneasy perspective is balanced by the artist’s humorous, yet bitter satire.  In Time to Pray, 2012, a family of apes grouped in a pose redolent of ritual worship are in fact engaged in coital activity, overseen by a supplicating mullah, who seems to vindicate the absurdity of adherence to religious stricture.

Beyond Politics, Iranians Share Their Rich Art and Culture

Toronto's Tirgan Festival is the largest of its kind in the world 

Vancouver Pars National Ballet. Courtesy Epoch Times.

by Madalina Hubert, Epoch Times

Legend has it that the land of Iran was expanded into a diverse nation when the Iranian archer Arash shot an arrow to end the dispute between the feuding kingdoms of Iran and Turan.

The understanding was that the place the arrow landed would mark the territory between the two countries.

The arrow flew for a long time—from dawn to noon—and significantly expanded Iran’s boundaries, encompassing in its path different cultures, ethnicities, languages, and traditions.

This legend inspired Tirgan, a traditional festivity honouring diversity, and today this celebration continues with a multi-day Toronto festival called Tirgan (Tir is a reference to arrow in Farsi).

“For thousands of years, Iranians have been celebrating diversity … and Tirgan is a celebration of diversity,” said Behrouz Amouzgar, the festival’s public relations director.

The Tirgan Festival, taking place July 18-21 at the Harbourfront Centre, is the largest celebration of Iranian art and culture in the world. With over 90 events and 150 Canadian and international artists of Iranian descent, the festival features artistic and cultural events of various genres, as well as a food and shopping bazaar.

Unpicking the Negatives

Images of Iran in the West

A German, an exiled Iranian and a Persian singer – at the "Bliss Festival", the clichés are roundly challenged and turned on their heads. If we look beyond the stereotypical images of Iran, we find a culture that has the power to touch our hearts.

by Marian Brehmer, Qantara

Here's Benedikt Fuhrmann, the spotlight trained on him, standing in lederhosen and woollen stockings, typical of Bavaria in southern Germany. But we're in Hamburg, in the North of Germany, and this is a festival of Iranian culture. How did this mishmash come about?

Benedikt Fuhrmann, a photographer and designer from Bavaria, travelled through Iran in 2006 and fell in love. "Fell in love," he says, with the effect that Iran had on him. The country had a firm hold on him, as did the hospitable and friendly Iranian people. So he stayed – ostensibly on his way to Vietnam – for a whole year, eventually expressing this affinity by way of a photo exhibition in 2012.

His collection of 24 empathic images and sound installations, aims to act as an antidote to the negative images of Iran so prevalent in the West.

Benedikt Fuhrmann spent a year in Iran and attempted to acquaint himself with the culture so often shrouded by negative images prevalent in the West. He aims to pass on his findings to a German audience in the form of an exhibition of photos and sound installations. Image courtesy of Qantara.

Asia Pacific's art market comes of age

Growing affluence in the region is leading art collectors and dealers to look closer to home

by Roxana Azimi and Florence de Changy, Guardian Weekly

This year the Hong Kong International Art Fair was held under the Art Basel brand name for the first time, sending an important message to the art world. After Basel and Miami, the leading western art show has invested in the former British colony. Art dealers, collectors and the merely curious enjoyed an artistic "fusion" in late May that mixed bankable western artists with Asian stars. But the east-west paradigm is not the only one at play in the contemporary art market; a pan-Asian shift is under way and local identities are being asserted.

The art market, as usually understood by the players in the art world, has moved to Hong Kong to meet Asia, and is being transformed in the process. Unnoticed by the west, the Asia-Pacific region has developed several artistic centres and is now determined to assert its own tastes and preferences, with no regard for what some would call western diktats.

This awakening of contemporary art in Asia is backed by abundant regional cash. According to a 2012 study by consultants Capgemini, there are more millionaires in Asia than in the United States. To lure them to the cause of art, quality art fairs have burgeoned since 2007 in Dubai, New Delhi, Hong Kong and Singapore, with the next one, the Sydney Contemporary, due in September. They share a common characteristic, which is that the Asian component dominates. The stars here are not British (Damien Hirst) or American (Jeff Koons and Richard Prince), but Chinese (Liu Wei), Iranian (Farhad Moshiri) and Indonesian (Eko Nugroho).

Working underground: the life of an Iranian tattoo artist

This tattoo features a line from a Persian poem: "If Iran no longer existed, I would no longer want to exist either."

Contributor Sara Tehran, The Observers

In Iran, tattoos were long considered only fit for criminals. But in the past few years, they have become popular with the younger generation, which has abandoned the Persian word “khalkoobi” for the western term “tattoo”. However, Iran’s thriving tattoo scene remains underground.

While there is no specific law against tattoos, the Iranian authorities use Islamic law to denounce it, as they do with many other trends considered too “Western”. When they arrest criminals and parade them in public – a common practice in Iran – they sometimes show off men’s tattoos as “proof” of their guilt. Meanwhile, athletes are forced to hide theirs under band-aids during competitions.

All tattoo artists work underground, usually in the back rooms of beauty and tanning salons. Some have picked up their skills abroad, in the United Arab Emirates or in Iraqi Kurdistan, and returned to teach others. While their ranks are growing, some Iranians still prefer to go abroad to get more complicated tattoos.

Iran listens for Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, the lost voice of Ramadan

Traditional Persian recording of Rabana (Our Lord) has not been broadcast since artist spoke out against government in 2010

Iranian singer Mohammad-Reza Shajarian enjoys enormous popularity in Iran for his recording of a Ramadan prayer set to Persian melodies. Photograph: Kamran Jebreili/AP. Courtesy Guardian.

by Saeed Kamali Dehghan, Guardian

At every Ramadan for more than 30 years, millions of Iranians have turned on the TV or the radio to listen to one particular prayer in the few moments just before Iftar, the evening meal when observers break their fast.

It is called Rabana (Our Lord), a breathtaking performance by Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, Iran's most celebrated singer and grand maestro, who has selected sections of four different Arabic verses of the Qur'an, each beginning with the phrase "Our Lord" and sung it as one combined prayer, based on traditional Persian melodies.

Many Iranian faithfuls regard it as the perfect way to express thanks to God and to ask for his mercy and forgiveness at the end of their day-long religious duty. For thousands of non-believers, too, Rabana is compulsory listening as Ramadan is as much an opportunity for big family gatherings as it is a religious festival.

"Our Lord, grant us mercy from thine own presence for thou art the grantor of bounties without measure," Shajarian sings in Rabana. "Our Lord, we believe; then do thou forgive us and have mercy upon us for thou art the best those who show mercy." A version of Shajarian's Rabana with English subtitles is posted on Youtube.

How Artists Survive

Part 4 - Independence Day in Iran 

by Juri Koll, The Huffington Post

I got a compliment for my first "Survive" article (for Huff Post) yesterday, from Tehran. I was grateful, and as I began to explore this person's links, I found an accomplished conceptual artist whose work goes to the heart of what it means to be an artist, to be free, to express independently within an incredibly restrictive society.

We conversed on a famous social network that is forbidden in Iran, and so Hadi and I conversed through the early morning hours of Tehran via a proxy network. When I realized it was 4 a.m. there, he said "No problem, my sleep should wait when we are talking about art." Ironically, I'm sure that it's recorded somewhere on one of our NSA servers now.

His name is Hadi Fallahpisheh, and his most recent work is called US Prime, and was exhibited at the Maryam Harandi Gallery in Tehran in 2012. The title refers to us, as in both U.S. and Iran -- as people. And Prime, as in prime symbol, which is used to generate more names for things that are similar, according to Wikipedia. U.S. Prime as a work creates an understanding of the concept in several ways.

Hadi discovered some postcards from the late 1950s and early 1960s in which members of an Iranian family write home about the U.S., expressing their impressions of the U.S. from famous places like the Grand Canyon, San Francisco Bay Bridge at sunset, Chicago's skyline, and the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations, and somewhat out of the way places such as a YMCA building in Des Moines, Iowa, and the Bull Shoals Dam in the Ozarks. The cards are blown up big, supplemented with the actual backs of the cards translated into English.

These often happy impressions are laced with longing for home and family. Hadi "bought them off an old woman who was selling her used furniture". She was the mother of the people listed in the postcards.

Border

Iranian photographer breaks down borders to win Royal Academy Rose Award

 Mitra Tabrizian wins praise for an image that captures “the crisis of contemporary culture” in both East and West.

Mitra Tabrizian, ‘The Long Wait’, 2005. Image courtesy the artist,Wapping Project, Bankside, and Art Radar Asia.

by Art Radar Asia

On 3 June 2013, the Royal Academy of Arts, London, announced Tehran-born, London-based photographer Mitra Tabrizian as winner of the Rose Award for Photography. The Long Wait brings together ideas of East and West in its exploration of migration, belonging and contemporary culture.  

Mitra Tabrizian’s The Long Wait, from the 2005-2006 series “Border”, was named the winner of the annual Rose Award and awarded a GBP1000 prize. The work will show at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition from 10 June until 18 August 2013 in London.

The Long Wait is a portrait of a female Iranian exile who is anonymous and whose story remains unknown to the public.

Breaking down “Borders” with photography

In an interview with curator Rose Issa cited on the artist’s website, Tabrizian explained that the “Border” series, photographed in London and Tehran, concentrates on “the fantasy” of Iranians in exile. The artist said that the subjects photographed in London present “a sense of displacement, solitude, creating a mise-en-scene which is unsettling”. The photographs shot in Tehran are panoramic views of crowds in what Tabrizian calls “a familiar environment, yet the image still connotes a sense of seclusion, stressing the alienation felt by Iranians today.”

Sublunar

Azin Seraj's Unsettling Art Vehemently Criticizes US Sanctions on Iran 

The artist presents a politically pointed exhibition about the effects of American economic policy on the people of her native Iran. 

Azin Seraj, "Infant Formula", Digital Print, Framed, 30" x 20", 2013. Courtesy Martina }{ Johnston Gallery.

by Alex Bigman, East Bay Express

Sublunar, Azin Seraj's debut solo exhibition now at Martina } { Johnston Gallery, is one of the more overtly political exhibitions you will find in Berkeley presently. The artist, who holds citizenship in Iran and Canada, presents a vehement counter-narrative to the Obama administration's rhetoric around placing escalating economic sanctions on Iran. At the same time, Seraj sees her work as, above all, "synthesizing personal experiences and meaning" in the contexts in which she operates. Her pieces often drift askew of hard politics toward a more expansive, even mystical aesthetic terrain. The result is illuminating.

Although exhibited in the gallery's back screening room, Sublunar's frontispiece is "Lullaby," a video in which hazy and unsettling imagery — rows of ice cubes dyed to resemble the Iranian flag slowly dripping, plumes of likewise colored smoke curling up into a burnt-orange cloud — accompanies an audio track of Obama triumphantly announcing the tightening of economic sanctions on Iran in condemnation of the country's nuclear program. "We are sending a clear message that we stand with the Iranian people as they seek to exercise their universal rights," he concludes. Text then appears on screen before a moonlit nocturnal scene, effectively replacing the suggestive opacity of the previous visuals with a clear position: the sanctions, although couched by the American president in a rhetoric of humanitarianism, have in fact resulted in serious shortages of food and medicine for Iranians. Obama's waxing on universal rights hence rings with "no validity or justification amongst Iranians across the world."

Love and Pomegranates: Artists and Wayfarers on Iran

by Meghan Nuttall Sayres, The Huffington Post

My last post was entitled "Media Washed Middle East," in which I wrote about my experiences traveling and writing about the Middle East. Those sojourns abroad culminated in an anthology that was just published this spring by Nortia Press entitled Love and Pomegranates: Artists and Wayfarers on Iran. It is a collection of essays, poetry, interviews and blog posts written by ordinary people who have found friendships, mentors and muses in Iran. The anthology aims to challenge stereotypes about Iran and its people currently perpetuated in the Western media. Below is the introduction to the book...

Prior to my first trip to Iran in March 2005, when I was invited to speak at the country's First International Children's Book Festival, I had looked for a book to help relieve doubts about my decision to go. At first, I found none. Then a friend gave me a copy of Alison Wearing's Honeymoon in Purdah. Wearing's account of her travels in Iran during the summer of 2000 helped me to deconstruct the myth that Iran is a haven of sequestered women and armed masked martyrs. Her book -- infused with humor -- showed me that I, too, would be welcomed there.

Love and Pomegranates: Artists and Wayfarers on Iran came about because my friends, colleagues and I have developed a profound appreciation of Iranian culture and an abundance of stories about the friendships we made and the generosity we received in Iran. On our journeys we found another Iran, one that lies in stark contrast to the ominous picture of their culture painted by the American and other Western mainstream media, which has repeatedly tainted our collective perspective on Iran. A recent study discovered that half of Americans view Iran as a threat and opinions of that country have worsened in recent years; yet, two thirds of us have never met an Iranian. Perhaps the study suggests that the media's focus on our nation's foreign policies and on the idea of national security prevents us from considering the richness of Persian history and culture, which reflects a long-held tradition of peace and hospitality.

Perhaps the bias against Iranians is bound up in a bias against Muslims. After the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden in 2011 polls revealed that the perceived threat from Muslims living in the United States and abroad increased significantly. While many Iranians in the U.S. and Iran are Muslim, they are also secular, Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Bahai, or follow other spiritual paths. An Iranian acquaintance of mine living in Tehran attends her father's mosque and her mother's Catholic church. Dr. Carl Ernst, a professor of Islamic Studies at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill estimates that there are at least 300,000 Christians in Iran today. Historically, in Sasanian Iran, Christianity was a prominent religion and home to a number of Eastern churches that were considered heretical by the Byzantines.

An Uphill Struggle All the Way

Musicians in Iran

Officials sweeping up CDs and DVDs in Iran. Photo Courtesy MEHR and Qantara.

by Bamdad Esmaili, Qantara

With heavy censorship and no copyright laws, being a musician in Iran is a thankless job. Bamdad Esmaili spoke to a number of Iranian musicians about the manifold challenges they face.

The presidential elections in Iran four years ago and the waves of protest they unleashed remain fresh in many people's minds, particularly now that the country went to the polls again on 14 June. In 2009, songs relating to the so-called "Green Movement" sprang up like mushrooms. Musicians inside and outside Iran released new material inspired by the political protest movement on the Internet on a daily basis.

Singer Arya Aramnejad from Babol in northern Iran was among them. His song "Ali Barkhiz", which he put out during the religious Ashura festival in 2009, proved his undoing. In the music video for the track, he sang, "What sin have the people committed? / We just want freedom", while showing scenes of bloody clashes between militia and demonstrators.Aramnejad went on to call upon the imam Ali, considered by many Muslims to be the very first imam, to rise up and do something. As a result of his song, the musician was repeatedly sent to prison, where he suffered many reprisals. He was only released again in early 2013.

Threats and repression at home and abroad 

Untitled 2013

Nasim Nasr on Her Exhibition "Untitled 2013" at Australia's Greenaway Art Gallery

Courtesy The Huffington Post

Interview by James Scarborough, The Huffington Post

Nasim Nasr's artistic practice seeks to diagnose and interpret universal themes that resonate with all viewers, irrespective of cultural heritage. Her statement for her upcoming show at Australia's Greenaway Art Gallery, which includes new video, photographic and three-dimensional works, elaborates on this practice:

The repetitive chant of "I believe in love" manifests a non-denominational universalism in belief, both as announcement and affirmation, of a philosophy of compassion, harmony and goodness in a contemporary world of intolerance and indifference.

The words "I believe in love" symbolically and metaphorically fill the cupped hands, which are then passed over the speaker's face and head, much like in the act of washing or blessing, suggesting the essential nature or soul of the speaker in this universal hope for humanity. Living with and exercising a desire to believe in love can unify all differences.

Her work, however, is more complex and, thus, more interesting than the simple profession of "I believe in love." It has to acknowledge and assimilate cultures with different artistic and value systems, the least of which are her own. She was born in Iran and later immigrated to Australia. In fact, it's the struggle to express universal themes in a polarized world that gives the work its edge, its relevance, and its relentless interest.

Objectification

FAD interviews Iranian artist: Afshin Naghouni

The Veil, 2012, mixed media, 150 x 190 cm. Courtesy FAD

After falling from the 6th floor of a building in Iran at the age of 24, fleeing to England three years later to seek refuge from wars and revolutions, to being left on his own permanently disabled in a wheelchair with only 350 pounds in his pocket. All of these trials and tribulations combined with his already embedded artistic talent has helped him to recieve a well deserved title as an established and highly acclaimed artist living in London

Playing it ‘safe’ for many years, Naghouni’s art now deals with thoughtful and provacative themes, where he questions how Muslim women are oppressed and exploited while western women are liberated, and vice versa. How we become what we wear and what we wear becomes even more important than the person who wears them. He thrives on continually reminding his viewer that there is a darker more sinister concept embedded within images which at first glance seem visually pleasing. He seeks to challenge them to discern what, if anything is real.

Brimming with a cool demeanour, a pure soul and a passion which is only ignited when the time is right to produce, Naghouni sits down with FAD at Go Figurative, where he just recently finished a solo exhibition, to answer some questions about his life challenges and artistic practice and how it is now ‘surreal’ for him to be exhibiting with artists like Banksy.

Art exhibition highlights Molla Nasreddin heritage

by Aynur Jafarova,  AzerNews

Azerbaijan's capital Baku will host the opening of an art exhibition devoted to the heritage of the Molla Nasreddin literary character inspired by 13th century Muslim cleric who was remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes, on June 21.

The exhibition, titled "The value of Molla Nasreddin heritage in the modern world", is being organized by Miras Social Organization in Support of Studying Cultural Heritage and takes place in Baku Art Gallery.

The exhibits at the show, which aims to show the value of Molla Nasreddin heritage in the present-day world, are devoted to the topics of the Molla Nasreddin satirical magazine, which was one of the most remarkable projects in the history of the Azerbaijani press.

The Baku exhibition features works by young painters such as Yaylagul Ramazanova, Emin Elishov, Shahin Guliyev, Matanat Aghazade, Aydan Aghazade, Kanan Mammadov, Anar Shamsiyev, Gurban Orujly, Vugar Gurbanov, Konul Mammadova, Vusala Talibova and others.

The eight-page Molla Nasreddin magazine, which was published in Azerbaijani and occasionally in the Russian language, represented a new stage in the development of national satire and cartoon art. The features and columns of the magazine were discussions, short witty pieces of writing, humorous poems, advertisement and telegrams, satirical stories, anecdotes, cartoons, caricatures, illustrations, etc.

Edinburgh Int’l Film Festival 2013: From Tehran to London

by Michael Pattison, Front Row Reviews

At the present crossroads, the conditions under which Iran’s national cinema is being made (or not being made, as is often the case) are as worthy of analysis as the films themselves. Precisely because Iranian filmmakers are currently under threat of artistic censorship and/or legal restriction (such as house arrest or even a prison sentence), however, their output has enjoyed an unquestioned critical status, as if an artist working within and against such suppression is by default a genius. As Jafar Panahi’s This Is Not a Film demonstrated last year, though, courage is not equable to insight. Condemnation of a political regime does not therefore preclude criticism of the art conditioned by it; for too long now, Iran’s more internationally celebrated filmmakers have, for numerous reasons, misplaced their focus and/or shirked the grander questions facing them.

In the case of Mania Akbari’s latest work From Tehran to London, it’s unlikely that anyone will see the film without prior knowledge that only half of it was completed. It opens with a dedication to “all the filmmakers in Iran, who have served a prison sentence and the ones who are still in prison”, and toward the end of its 45 minutes the director herself tells us in voice-over that production was stopped after crew members were arrested; to begin with, Akbari had never been granted permission from the Iranian government to make the film. While it’s important to draw attention to this continually criminal administration, the fear is that the film itself is consequently celebrated as an inherently perceptive work.

This is not the case. From Tehran to London, originally titled Women Do Not Have Breasts, unfolds as a series of conversational exchanges between a petty bourgeois couple Ava (Neda Amiri) and Ashkan (Bijan Daneshmand), living in their plush home on the outskirts of Tehran, and their housemaid Maryam (Elahe Hesari) and Ava’s sister, Roya (Akbari). The film’s single-take set-ups will be familiar to those who have seen Akbari’s notable debut 20 Fingers (2004), as will the kind of talky intellectualising and cerebral but tempestuous self-assessments with which its characters converse. Sourness is never too far away.

Persian Influences and Women in Architecture

Gisue Hariri (R) and Mojgan Hariri (L), sisters and co-founders of Hariri & Hariri. Photo Courtesy Asia Society (Karin Kohlberg). 

Interview by Clara Lambert, Asia Society

In the male-dominated field of architecture, Gisue Hariri and Mojgan Hariri have been a complementary force for over 20 years, pushing the boundaries of modern and technically inspired design. The Iran-born sisters came to America and studied architecture at Cornell University in the 1970's. Together they established their New York firm Hariri & Hariri in 1986. They have expanded and redefined the standard definition of architecture by a holistic approach in designing, masterplans, buildings, interiors, furniture, products and, more recently, jewelry and accessories.

The Hariris are often cited as innovators of cutting-edge materials and digital technology that are integrated into futuristic yet organic designs, from luxury residences like the iconic Sagaponac House in Long Island, New York to large-scale multi-use projects like the Sternbrauerei in Salzburg, Austria, which is currently in construction. Their work has been shown at the MOMA, National Building Museum, and the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, among other institutions. 

Here, Gisue shares with Asia Society their family experiences, Persian influences, meaningful inspirations and insight.

Before coming to the U.S. for college, you were born and raised in Iran. How did your family and upbringing affect who or where you are today? Was there a cumulative or specific turning point when you realized you wanted to pursue architecture and come to America?

My sister and I are one and a half years apart and grew up in a small Iranian town in the south, attending public schools early on as my father's profession required that we live far in the desert near the oil fields. The desert became both deeply isolating and nurturing. Isolation encouraged our imagination to run wild and develop ideas that a more conventional childhood would have found odd, and we often had to invent our own world, toys and games.

Traces

Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Marwan Sahmarani, Selma Gürbüz and Shahpour Pouyan 

19 June - 18 July 2013 

In the physical sense, traces can be visible marks left on a surface. There is also an historical and cultural sense. Our forthcoming exhibition Traces brings together the works of four artists, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Marwan Sahmarani, SelmaGürbüz and Shahpour Pouyan, highlighting their work on paper and explores how the intrinsic and associative qualities of the medium affects their work.

In today’s world when writing can be done on a keyboard and sketches made onscreen, paper can seem like an odd survival from an earlier age. The permanence of a mark of ink on paper sheet, which can only be written on once, seems to contradict the perceived fragility of the medium. Yet the very traits that make paper seem an anachronism in comparison to other media are also its strengths: they bequeath it a timeless and evocative quality. Once a trace is laid on to the paper, it can hardly be erased. Paper works cannot be over-worked or worked over. They tread a careful line between forward planning and spontaneous execution.

Paper is indelibly associated with books and the dissemination of knowledge. From its origins in China more than 2000 years ago, to its westward progression through Middle East and on to medieval Europe, through industrialization, up until the internet revolution of recent decades, paper was the primary medium of record.

In the Middle East until modern times paper was also a main medium for representation, with miniatures and diagrams, their strong graphic quality quite unlike easel painting on canvas. This abstract quality lends itself well to a contemporary context, as Marwan Sahramani’s paintings of comical militaristic figures on an almost translucent paper and Selma Gürbüz’s whimsical paintings on a coarser surface attest. Both recall miniatures but in quite different ways- Sahmarani with his finely wrought details embellishing gestural washes of colour, while Gürbüz works appear almost as illustrations emancipated from some giant apocryphal manuscript.

Nadia Kaabi-Linke’s Baruther Strasse, an imprint on paper taken from the surface of a wall, is from her ongoing project that highlights historically or symbolically significant walls in Berlin and Tunis. Linking recent history to a more distant past, the wall in question is from a 19th century unplanned graveyard in Berlin which gradually developed into fully fledged cemetery when wealthier families began to build tombs and crypts, which eventually formed an imposing wall around the compound, which reminds Kaabi-Linke of how empty spaces around Berlin were occupied by squatters during the 1980s and 1990s.

The Rumi Festival

This summer the Beshara School at Chisholme is hosting the Rumi Festival, 2–4 August, a celebration of the incomparable life and legacy of Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi, whose poetry of universal love and service has had a transformative effect throughout the Muslim world and beyond over the past 700 years.

The Rumi Festival is a unique gathering of artists, scholars, and lovers of truth, celebrating the life work and contemporary relevance of a giant of world spirituality and literature. Its programme is intended to reflect the wholeness and diversity of Rumi’s vision, at once challenging and generous, serious and playful, spiritually aspiring while being firmly planted on this earth.

The Festival Programme contains a rich mix of talks, participatory events, poetry, art and dance, kicking off with a solo concert from Kudsi Erguner, master of the Turkish Ney, on the Friday evening. The programme goes on to encompass talks and discussions about Rumi and his influence today with Roderick Grierson, Alan Williams, Emily Young and others; a Whirling Dervish Sema from Istanbul; installation art from Ismail Acar; theatre, dance and art inspired by Rumi's work and much more.


Details of speakers, performers and programming is still coming in – the below is just an initial taster of some things you can look forward to, more details will be posted soon.

Inspired by Islam

“22500 Pages” by Hadieh Shafie, which is made of tightly wound scrolls, resembles op art. Photo Courtesy San Antonio Express-News

by Elda Silva, San Antonio Express-News

Past and present come together seamlessly in Soody Sharifi's collages. Still, something seems off.

In “Fashion Week,” contemporary women who have been digitally dropped into an ancient Persian court scene strut a catwalk that leads to an empty throne. Modestly dressed in street clothes, the ersatz models' heads are covered by hijabs of varying lengths. Meanwhile, their precursors enjoy the show free of head scarves.

The piece by the Iranian-born, Houston-based Sharifi is one of 20 works featured in “The Jameel Prize: Art Inspired by Islamic Tradition.” The traveling exhibit organized by London's Victoria and Albert Museum is currently at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

Inaugurated in 2009, the international biennial prize recognizes contemporary artists and designers who draw on Islamic traditions of art and craft. Some of the pieces in the exhibit, such as Sharifi's, touch on social and cultural issues.

The works in the exhibit are not, strictly speaking, “Islamic art,” says Tim Stanley, senior curator at the V&A.

“Visually, you sense things pulled from Islamic culture and reworked in a way that's relevant to the contemporary world,” Stanley says. “So I think it's really good because it allows you that very quick understanding that there is actually a relevance of Islamic tradition to contemporary art.”

An Artist's Tale

Farideh Lashai, Keep Your Interior Empty of Food that You Mayest Behold Therein the Light of Interior (video still), 2010-2012, Painting with projected animation and sound; oil, acrylic and graphite on canvas, 71 x 78.75 in / 180 x 200 cm. Courtesy of Leila Heller Gallery.

by Doug McClemont, The Huffington Post

Storytelling has been an integral part of life in the Middle East -- and Iran in particular -- for centuries. Whether spoken in the streets, played as a game or painted on a canvas, Iranian folkloric tradition, with its uniquely theatrical and magical approach to the question of what it means to be a denizen of the earth, traverses regions and generations. Fairy tales, jokes, religious allegories, and animal legends have long been a part of a continuing oral and visual history, though the number of Naghals (traditional Persian storytellers who narrate painted scenes) has dwindled in recent decades. Still, elaborate storytelling in all forms remains ubiquitous, and to be Iranian means having the ability to suspend one's disbelief and succumb to the sometimes troubling, sometimes beautiful details of an oft-told tale.

Today if a story from the East makes its way in a westerly direction, it is not likely a tale from this rich, uplifting tradition but rather a news item that brings with it tragic or politically divisive information. These accounts are often colored by the lens of an entrenched xenophobia and fraught with inaccuracies. Rare are the bits of news that can inspire us with a meaningful artistic charge. But take for example the storied life of Iranian painter and writer Farideh Lashai. The artist, who died in February after a battle with cancer, was nothing short of a national treasure in the country of her birth. A humanist and lifelong painter who also published the memoir entitled Shal Bamu (The Jackal Came) in 2003 and translated seven plays of Bertolt Brecht, effectively introducing his writings to the Iranian public for the first time. She was a socially aware artistic presence in one of the planet's many male-dominated cultures. Respect for the artist and renown in her homeland are evidenced by the four days of front page newspaper coverage in Tehran that announced her passing and recounted her artistic life. Several documentary stories were produced within weeks of her death and aired on the Farsi language edition of the BBC as well as Voice of America News.

Cinema and Censorship

Iran's Farhadi and China's Jia make Cannes splash

From left, directer Asghar Farhadi, actors Berenice Bejo and Ali Mosaffa listen to questions during a press conference for the film The Past at the 66th international film festival, in Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 17, 2013. Photo Courtesy AP /Virginia Mayo.

by Jill Lawless, The Associated Press

Two directors from countries with tough film censorship brought bold and probing movies to the Cannes Film Festival on Friday — one exploring China's social problems, the other delving into the mysteries of the human heart.

Jia Zhangke's "A Touch of Sin" depicts facets of fast-changing China the government prefers to avoid: corruption, greed, violent crime and the growing gap between economic winners and losers.

"The Past," by Academy Award-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, is an unsparing tale of domestic upheaval, set in and around Paris and made with a largely French cast.

Both films are competing for Cannes' top prize, the Palme d'Or — and both have been cleared for release in their homelands, where filmmakers often fall foul of restrictions.

Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has approved "The Past" for screening, and "A Touch of Sin" is due to open in China in the fall.

The two directors are pleased their films will be seen at home, but they gave very different descriptions of working in settings where official censorship is an everyday reality.

Fluffing the Pillows

Iranian born, Berlin-based artist Nairy Baghramian exhibits at MIT List Visual Arts Center

Showing: May 9-July 14, 2013

Installation view: Nairy Baghramian: Fluffing the Pillows (Moorings, Gurneys, Silos, Mops, News Rack, Railing), 2012-13. Image Courtesy: MIT List Visual Arts Center and Artdaily.

The MIT List Visual Arts Center presents Nairy Baghramian: Fluffing the Pillows (Moorings, Gurneys, Silos, Mops News Rack, Railing) an exhibition by Iranian born, Berlin-based artist Nairy Baghramian.  Baghramian uses disparate tropes and motifs drawn from a variety of sources—from interior design to physiology—in her investigation of sculptural form. With a keen sense of traditional sculptural concerns such as material and volume, her work plays on the supposed distinctions between decoration and function, industrial and handmade, commodity and art object.  Her work has also centered on the political and social relations implied by objects and the site of display, in particular on the exhibition space as a type of interior, where affect and experience increasingly conflict with luxury and leisure. 

For this commissioned installation, Baghramian abstracts materials and forms derived from utilitarian and maritime objects, drawing out the formal and creative processes that define notions of the ‘sculptural.’ The exhibition centers on groups of forms, such as Silos, Gurneys, and Moorings, each sited in relation to the museum’s architecture. Her Silos share their name with a container or structure used to store bulk or industrial materials. These seemingly soft yet solid forms, like those used to hold or transport materials, are created out of sailing fabric, rubber, and pleather. Made from chrome-plated poles, Gurneys—a term to describe wheeled stretchers—are used to support the formless sacks. Baghramian’s Moorings are named after objects that are used to moor, or secure, boats in place at port. Cast in aluminum, their shape is derived from the large hooks that crane operators use to lift commercial cargo containers. A news rack displays a glossy publication, Baghramian’s exhibition catalog, disguised as an upscale boating magazine. The artist brings these forms and their complex associations—boating and sailing, trade and cargo, the labor of industry, service, and stevedores—into the museum as a means to investigate gendered notions of labor and craft.

Female Warriors of Art at Tate Modern

by Karen Ruimy, The Huffington Post, UK

As I was sitting at the Buying Committee of the Tate Modern, my eyes were arrested in awe and also complete ignorance by a piece from an artist I did not know about, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. I was struck by the strength of her art.

The fact that she is a woman working in Iran, in her 80s, made her even more striking. The committee could not complete the purchase. My heart was so sure: this is a major artist, from the depth of the Middle East, this area of the world that is going through some dark ages. She is a star, we cannot let this piece go, let's find a solution.

What made me think of the strength I found in Louise Bourgeois? I still cannot help comparing those women and their force in their art.

So I started to find out about Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. I found she spent her earlier years in New York, studied at Parsons School of Design and Cornell University, collaborated with Warhol, was friends with Pollock, De Kooning and many other geniuses. But she decided to go back to her country where she developed her art with traditional Iranian crafts like reverse glass painting, cut mirrors and Sufi symbolism.

This woman travelled to America and Paris searching for art education. And she always tried to come back to her land despite so much segregation for her as a woman, as an artist-woman... her art was confiscated and burned during the revolution. And eventually she went back to live in her country.

Meditations of Freedom

Europe exposed to Mousavi's art

 Berlin Art Academy to display artworks of Iran's opposition leader Mousavi

Courtesy Oye Times

by Cyrus Green, Oye Times

An arts institution in the German capital has decided to showcase 28 artworks created by Mir Hossein Mousavi, an Iranian opposition leader currently under house arrest for more than two years.

The Akademie der Künste (Academy of the Arts) in Berlin, the oldest and one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in Germany, says it is to hold a two-week exhibition in which the paintings of Mir Hossein Mousavi will be displayed before the public.

The showcase will get underway on 6 June, just days before Iranians go to the polls to choose a new president. It will also coincide with the fourth anniversary of the widely contested 2009 presidential.

The opening ceremony will be attended by human rights lawyer and Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, as well as top Mousavi advisor Ardershir Amir-Arjomand.

Hamid Hamidi, one of the organisers of the display, told Deutsche Welle that one of the goals of the event was to present Mousavi’s thoughts to a European public.

After stepping down as Iran’s last prime minister in 1988, Mousavi, a painter and an architect, devoted much of his time to the arts and would take over the presidency of the newly founded Academy of Arts in 1998.

Iranian Peacemakers

Iranian artists collaborate in the name of peace, in the form of a new exhibition at the Opera Gallery, London, entitled Peace from the Bottom of my Art

 

Untitled 2009-2013, by Ahmad Morshedloo. Courtesy The Majalla.

by Tara Aghdashloo, The Majalla

The international community does not really expect to read the words ‘peace’ and ‘Iran’ in one sentence, even though peace is a desperately desired by Iranians. Because of this contradiction, Peace from the Bottom of My Art, the cleverly titled exhibition of Iranian artists at the Opera Gallery, is a timely effort.

The curators, Leila Varasteh and Vida Zaim, approached nearly eighty artists and selected fifty-eight works to display in a gallery with a capacity of twenty-five. “We wanted the artists to express their inner emotions about peace and how they view it in their mind and in their heart,” Zaim said to The Majalla. Most of the works, except for a dozen or so, were created for the exhibition and in response to this theme. Throughout the show, it becomes clear that the question of peace runs deep in the veins of Iranian artists.

On the opening night the room was buzzing with bubbles, so much so that the walls and the art were barely visible. “We wanted to introduce works of emerging artists as well as established ones, especially those who haven’t been introduced through auctions and such,” Zaim says. That range is palpable, as the works of big names such as Parviz Tanavoli (the famed highest-selling Iranian artist) and Koorosh Shishegaran were hung side-by-side with the work of lesser-known artists.

Curvature of Time

Artist Shahla Hosseini’s Dubai exhibition 

For the artist, life has taken on a new meaning after the death of her mother, just as the knick-knacks in her quirky boxes

Hosseini’s boxes contain abstract photographs and objects such as strands of hair and medicine bottles. Courtesy Gulf News

by Jyoti Kalsi, Gulf News

Iranian artist Shahla Hosseini’s latest exhibition, titled “Curvature of Time”, is a poignant tribute to her mother and an attempt to come to terms with a world without her. Through her mystical and meditative mixed-media collages in boxes, and paintings on fabric, the artist expresses her grief and feeling of vulnerability after the death of her mother earlier this year, and contemplates her changed perspective of the world and of life. The simple yet profound artworks invite viewers to reflect on the perennial flow of time and the delicate balance between life and death.

“Losing your parents makes you feel so extremely vulnerable. The meaning of life changes completely and it is a struggle to understand this changed world and regain your balance,” Hosseini says. She has tried to do this through her quirky boxes, filled with various knick-knacks. The artist is well known for such boxes. She began making them over three decades ago, as a way of dealing with the turmoil of the war between Iran and Iraq. Her latest boxes are an intriguing mix of abstract photographs, scientific graphs and drawings, medical paraphernalia such as bones, medicine bottles and respiratory charts, and a variety of found objects such as electrical switches, metal springs and wires, toy animals, pieces from the artist’s old sculptures, parts from broken-down machines and strands of hair.

Reza Derakhshani's works evoke Iran's magnificent past

In Titanic 1979, Reza Derakhshani says, a crown in a sea of blue and poetry by Hafiz represent the sinking of culture, dynasties and civilisation. Photos courtesy Salsali Private Museum and The National.

by Anna Seaman, The National

If you want a reason to visit Reza Derakhshani's solo show at Salsali Private Museum, the fact that the main installation has completely changed since it was unveiled during Art Week is a good one.

The black-sand snakes that the artist shaped with a common house brush before the opening in March have been swept away and replaced with skulls that lie at the base of the tomb of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire. The area has also been curtained off and filled with black light. To see the glowing shape of Pasargadae, you must peek through cut-out eyeholes. Its dynamism, colour and theme summarise the exhibition.

The exhibit was originally planned as a retrospective show, but Derakhshani was not content with something so static, so he took his old paintings, characterised by vivid colours and Persian iconography, and created new ones. The mostly monochrome and muted tones illustrate dark internal processes that stem from the destruction Derakhshani is witnessing in his homeland.

"Being sensitive, you cannot escape it," he says in a slow and thoughtful manner that reflects his pensive creativity. "I'm not into political slogans but to a certain point I don't mind if it is expressed it in a poetic way."

Politics and Art of Iran’s Revolutionary Tulips

by Garrett Nada, The Iran Primer

Their petals are on the national flag. They line the dome above Ayatollah Khomeini’s tomb. They adorn billboards of martyrs from the war with Iraq. They have been depicted on coins and postage stamps. And hotels, parks and restaurants are named after them. In Iran, the tulip―laleh in Farsi―is ubiquitous.

Tulips on stamp by Rozita. Courtesy The Iran Primer.

The Flag's Tulip

The tulip became one the most common symbols of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Its new flag featured a red tulip in the center to commemorate the revolution’s martyrs. The sword and the four crescent-shaped petals form the word “Allah” and symbolize the five pillars of Islam― faith, prayer, charity, fasting during Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca.

Flag of Iran. Courtesy The Iran Primer.

The revolution has always had a soft spot for the fragile spring flower, a symbol of martyrdom in Shiite Islam. In early Shiism's history, the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson Hossein fell in battle against the Umayyad Dynasty near Karbala, now part of modern Iraq. Tulips sprang from Hossein’s blood, according to tradition.