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~ This site brings together news stories, articles, photo essays, reviews, publications, conference proceedings, gallery events and exhibitions relating to the fields of Islamic art, architecture and archaeology.

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Category Archives: Artists – Iran

Monir Farmanfarmaian Talks Art

11 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by StudiesIslamica in Artists - Iran, Exhibitions - North America - Individual Artists

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Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Above the buzz of tool-wielding contractors installing two floors’ worth of her artwork at the Guggenheim Museum on Monday morning, even Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian had to ask, “Did I do that all?” An understandable reaction considering the 91-year-old was taking in her first major U.S. museum show. When her “Infinite Possibility. Mirror Works and Drawings, 1974-2014” exhibition bows Wednesday [March 11], museumgoers will get a kaleidoscopic look at one of the more involved, yet untold stories in the modern art world.

Read More: Monir Farmanfarmaian Talks Art

Master of Bronze Parviz Tanavoli Strives for Recognition on Home Soil

23 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by StudiesIslamica in Artists - Iran

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Parviz Tanavoli 5

Over the past few months, sculptor Parviz Tanavoli has been described to me as a visionary who is “a giant among his generation;” a master of modern art who “almost single-handedly resurrected sculpture as an art form in Iran”; and “quite simply the most famous and influential living artist from the Islamic world.” Tanavoli, who was born in Iran, divides his time between Tehran and Horseshoe Bay, north of Vancouver, where he has lived since 1989. But while 2015 is shaping up to be perhaps the biggest of his career, with a major retrospective that has just opened outside Boston and more to come, recognition has largely eluded him at home in Canada.

Read More: Master of Bronze Parviz Tanavoli Strives for Recognition on Home Soil

See also: Parviz Tanavoli: A Pawn in Iran’s Culture Wars

Parviz Tanavoli: A Pawn in Iran’s Culture Wars

17 Tuesday Feb 2015

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Parviz Tanavoli 4

On 16 March 2014 renowned Iranian sculptor Parviz Tanavoli awoke in his Tehran home to the sound of his daughter screaming. Twenty men had broken the locks on the door and entered his home. They refused to show identification, and proceeded to seize all the artwork they could find. Tanavoli’s daughter filmed the men as they bound the massive sculptures with metal chains and lifted them with small cranes onto pickup trucks waiting on the street outside. One rectangular bronze piece was not harnessed securely, and fell off its wooden pallet onto the street.

Read More: Parviz Tanavoli: A Pawn in Iran’s Culture Wars

See also: Parviz Tanavoli: Plenty of ‘Nothing’

Parviz Tanavoli: Plenty of ‘Nothing’

11 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by StudiesIslamica in Artists - Iran, Exhibitions - North America - Individual Artists

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Parviz Tanavoli 3

It is rare for an Iranian artist to be widely celebrated at home, withstanding the scrutiny of a nation in love with both art and the contemporary and yet highly critical of its living artists because it recognizes the contemporary as a category imposed from the outside. Born in 1937, Parviz Tanavoli has become a legendary figure through a prolific career as artist, scholar and teacher. Iran’s first significant modern sculptor, he works in a style distinctly his own, undeniably modern, and entirely Iranian. In bringing together over 50 years of his art in his first US solo museum exhibition, the Davis Museum has the task of engaging with thousands of years of cultural heritage, which Tanavoli draws on with fervour and ease.

Read More: Parviz Tanavoli: Plenty of ‘Nothing’

See also: Iranian Artist Parviz Tanavoli’s Solo US Show

Iran’s Most Celebrated Visual Artist, Parviz Tanavoli, Speaks to MEMO About His Work

04 Wednesday Feb 2015

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Parviz Tanavoli

As a young boy Parviv Tanavoli’s favourite toy was the simple lock. As there were no ready-made toys like those of today he would take them apart, fix them and make keys for the ones that didn’t work. “I was the locksmith of the neighbourhood because all the locks in those days had one key and they were handmade. There weren’t that many machine-made locks. If there were they were very expensive,” he tells me. Later Tanavoli went to Italy to study. It was on his return, he recalls, that he realised the role locks played in Shia Islam and Persian culture. In Iran public water houses were built in bazaars and neighbourhoods and during the hot summers passers-by would stop to take a sip of water. Gradually people started to make donations and the water houses became shrine-like decorated with imagery of the imams.

Read More: Iran’s Most Celebrated Visual Artist, Parviz Tanavoli, Speaks to MEMO About His Work

Seen in the Studio: Shirin Neshat

19 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by StudiesIslamica in Artists - Iran, Artists - North America

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Shirin Neshat

Stationed above a busy corner on Canal Street, the studio of the Iranian filmmaker and artist Shirin Neshat whirred with several working film editors and assistants upon our arrival. Neshat is best known for her black-and-white cinematic films addressing gender issues within Islamic culture. She shares the space with her partner Shoja Azari, a fellow filmmaker and frequent collaborator. Conversations in Farsi and Italian were shooting back and forth among the crew. “We are very lucky because our studio is like a community. We’re all close friends and we’re together all the time basically,” said Neshat.

Read More: Seen in the Studio: Shirin Neshat

Sweet Essence of Iran

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by StudiesIslamica in Artists - Iran, Exhibitions - Middle East - United Arab Emirates

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Rose and Nightingale

The ‘rose and the nightingale’ is a theme that has been used in Persian literature and visual imagery for centuries. The rose represents beauty, perfection and a sometimes self-absorbed and cruel beloved. And the nightingale symbolises the devoted lover yearning to become one with the beloved. The theme can thus be interpreted as a metaphor for both earthly and spiritual love. Curator Maneli Keykavoussi explores modern interpretations of this age-old theme in a group show titled The Rose and the Nightingale: A Persian Iconography by bringing together works by pioneers of Iranian modern art such as her mother, the late Farideh Lashai, and Farshid Mesghali and well-known Iranian artists such as Amin Roshan, Rozita Sharafjahan, Dariush Hosseini, Ladan Boroujerdi, Navid Azimi Sajadi, Masoumeh Bakhtiari, Farid Jafari Samarghandi, Gizella Varga Sinai, Rasool Soltani and Sara Rahanjam.

Read More: Sweet Essence of Iran

A Labour of Love

01 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by StudiesIslamica in Artists - Iran, Exhibitions - Middle East - United Arab Emirates

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A labour of love

It is obvious from the artworks in Ramin Shirdel’s first solo exhibition in Dubai, Whispers of Love, why the Iranian artist is also an award-winning architect. Shirdel’s three-dimensional wall-mounted works have been created from hundreds of painted pieces of wood of different shapes and sizes. These have been assembled together in layers that further combine to form Farsi-Arabic letters and words. The artworks, painted with bright automotive paints, look different from different angles. As you move around the pieces, the letters and words appear and disappear. And the layers seem to move in a rhythmic, wave-like motion, with the criss-crossing lines formed by the shadows adding to the movement and drama.

Read More: A Labour of Love

An Iranian Developer’s Entrancing Game About His Culture and the Mathematics of Art

19 Monday May 2014

Posted by StudiesIslamica in Artists - Iran, Visual Arts - Projects

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Mahdi Bahrami

When 21-year old Mahdi Bahrami took the stage at this year’s Experimental Gameplay Workshop, the audience was entranced by his game Engare. Projected onto a large screen to a crowd of hundreds of people, Bahrami showed solutions to his geometric, ancient Iranian art-influenced puzzle game. “So you have an object on a table,” he said to the audience, pointing to a screen where a rectangle sat on the edge of a desk. “Now if you draw a point somewhere on that object, what kind of line would it make if it fell?” He placed a dot on the corner of the rectangle. He hit “play.” The rectangle tumbled off the table, leaving behind a squiggly line.

Read More: An Iranian Developer’s Entrancing Game About His Culture and the Mathematics of Art

Sculptor Finds Himself in the Crossfire of Iran’s Culture Wars

31 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by StudiesIslamica in Artists - Iran

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Parviz Tanavoli

When officials from Tehran municipality broke into the house of Iran’s most celebrated visual artist to remove works they claimed were city property, they carelessly put chains around the unwrapped bronze sculptures and lifted them with cranes. The raid on the home of Parviz Tanavoli – which damaged and broke artworks worth millions of pounds – was rooted in a decade-long dispute between the artist and the local government, but has now been dragged into a rivalry between the mayor of Tehran and the president, Hassan Rouhani.

Read More: Sculptor Finds Himself in the Crossfire of Iran’s Culture Wars

Exiled Iranian Artist Shirin Neshat Looks at the Egyptian Revolution

03 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by StudiesIslamica in Artists - Iran

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Shirin Neshat 5

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian visual artist who was born in Qazvin, Iran, educated in Berkeley, California and is currently based in New York. Her earliest work as a photographer was born out of a trip back to Iran in 1993 where she explored concepts of exile and identity under a feminine lens. In the late nineties, she devoted herself to a series of stark, black and white video installations that referenced contradictions of gender in society. Breaking away from photography, she turned to cinema and directed her first feature-length film, “Women Without Men,” which won the 2009 Venice Film Festival Silver Lion award for best directing. Most recently, Neshat was honored by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland with a 2014 Crystal Award. The award is given annually to artists who have made contributions to improving the state of the world.

Read More: Exiled Iranian Artist Shirin Neshat Looks at the Egyptian Revolution

Iranian Artists Hit by Sanctions

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by StudiesIslamica in Artists - Iran

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Iran - Museum of Contemporary ArtInternational sanctions imposed against Iran over its disputed nuclear program are affecting all areas of Iranian life. Lately, inflation and a severely depreciated currency have begun to bite in a segment of society that seems far removed from debates over uranium enrichment and “possible military dimensions”: Tehran’s artistic class.

Read More: Iranian Artists Hit by Sanctions

Farzin Hedayatzadeh: An Interview

04 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by StudiesIslamica in Artists - Iran

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Farzin HedayatzadehIn this interview, the well-known sculpture-artist Farzin Hedayatzadeh presents some thoughts on the state of contemporary visual art in Iran.

Read More: Farzin Hedayatzadeh

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