Iranian Artists at Milan Triennial “Restless Earth”

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Date: 2 May 2017

Milan Triennial called “Restless Earth” this year showcases the works of more than sixty artists from more than forty countries including Iran.

The exhibition explores real and imaginary geographies, reconstructing the odyssey of migrants through personal and collective tales of exodus.

Iranian artists participating in this Exodus are Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, Hessam Rahamani and Bokhara Khalili.

The Restless Earth borrows its title from a collection of poems by Édouard Glissant, a Caribbean writer who probed the question of how different cultures can coexist. The exhibition shares in Glissant’s project—a pressing and necessary one that tries to describe this unstable and agitated present as a polyphony of voices and narratives.

Through the works of more than sixty artists from more than forty countries—such as Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, and Turkey—and with historical documents and objects of material culture, this exhibition charts both experiences and perceptions of migration and the current refugee crisis as an epoch-making transformation that is reframing contemporary history, geography, and culture.

The Restless Earth explores real and imaginary geographies, reconstructing the odyssey of migrants through personal and collective tales of exodus inspired by varying degrees of urgency and longing. The exhibition revolves around a series of geographic and thematic lines of inquiry—the war in Syria, the state of emergency in Lampedusa, life in refugee camps, the figure of the nomad or stateless person, and Italian migration in the early 20th century—which intersect with works that serve as visual metaphors for conditions of mobility and precariousness.

The Restless Earth focuses in particular on how artists bear witness to historic events, and how art can describe social and political change in the first person. The works on view point to a renewed faith that art and artists have a responsibility to portray and transform the world, creating not just images of conflict, but images that provide a space for critical thinking and exchange. Together, these stories—poised between historical epic and real-time diary—yield a vision of art as lyrical journalism, emotional documentary, and vivid, vital testimony.

The exhibition, which opened to the public on April 28 will run until August 20, 2017, is the result of a partnership between two institutions whose missions have always centered on the present, exploring the ways in which the experimental and innovative languages of contemporary art and culture can express radical changes in our world.

Source: Farairan from http://www.triennale.org/en/mostra/la-terra-inquieta/

Wildlife group Exhibition at Iranian Artists Forum

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Date: 29 April 2017

An exhibition of the Tooma Art Group which comprises a number of Iranian artists concerned about environmental issues, opened in Tehran on Friday 28 April 2017.

Tooma Art Group Exhibition with focus on Iran’s wildlife opened at Bahar Gallery of the Iranian Artists Forum (IAF) and will run through May 5, according to the website of Iranian Illustrators Society (casi.ir).

Organized under the auspices of the society, the exhibition features paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs and tapestries.

Part of the event’s proceeds will go towards environmental projects such as wildlife water holes — an important habitat component for a variety of wildlife providing drinking water for many species, and facilities for treatment of animals.

Participating artists include illustrators Negin Ehtesabian and Pejman Rahimizadeh, Ilgar Rahimi, Saeedeh Rezaee Badr, Saba Arabshahi, Mahnaz Saadatkia, Anis Soltani, Mahnaz Soleymannejad, as well as Afsaneh Khorramshahi and Alireza Owji who have participated in earlier charity events.

Nazanin Tahaee, Maryam Tahmasbi, Somayeh Alipour, Moslem Alamzadeh, Nastaran Anbari, Fereshteh Jafarimand and Mohanna Fazli are among others attending the event.

Pedram Kazerooni is one of the artists at the event preoccupied with environmental issues. In his exhibition ‘We Are All Part of the Earth,’ held a year ago in Tehran, he tried to help raise public awareness about wildlife and the necessity to protect it.

The current exhibition also features works by painters Asal Hazeqi and Leyla Refahi, as well as by graphic artist and photographer Homa Rostami, children’s book illustrator Mojgan Saeedian, graphic journalist Kamal Tabatabai, animator and caricaturist Sara Tayebzadeh and photographer Arezou Amidi.

Tooma Art Group has created an Instagram account (instagram.com/tooma_art_group) where a number of artworks are available for sale. The proceeds are used for environmental issues.

Iranian Artists Forum is located on Iranshahr Street.

Source: Financial Tribune

Pioneering Works titled: Figure & Figuration at New Art Gallery

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Date: 29 April 2017

Figure & Figuration is the name of a group exhibition of Pioneers of Iranian Contemporary Art which opened on the newly founded Art Gallery on 28 April 2017.

The showcased works are by painter, graphic artist, writer and film critic Aydin Aghdashlou, 76; avant-garde painter, sculptor and poet Jazeh Tabatabaee (1931-2008); painter, sculptor, poet, author and translator Hannibal Alkhas (1930-2010); painter and graphic artist Mahmoud Javadipour (1920-2012); and painter, writer and translator Mehdi Sahabi (1944-2009).

Also included are the artworks by painter and sculptor Iraj Zand (1950-2006), painter and sketch artist Manouchehr Motabar, 81, and painters Nasser Oveysi, 83, and Parvaneh Etemadi, 68.

Managed by painter, essayist, researcher and expert in cultural planning Toktam Farmanfarmaee, Farmanfarma Art Gallery will present an exhibition of figurative works by renowned artists titled ‘Figure and Figuration,’ for its inaugural display.

The featured works have been collected in collaboration with curator Farnaz Mohammadi.

The new gallery is located on A’rabi 2 St., North Kheradmand St., Karim Khan Blvd.

The gallery is open all days except Mondays. Visiting hours are from 11 am-7 pm.

Source: Farairan

Sotheby’s Middle East Art Week in London

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Date: 26 April 2017

Sotheby’s is hosting three separate auctions that will all showcase an entire range of Middle Eastern art in London. These auctions showcase art produced under the aegis of multiple Middle Eastern empires which flourished from the 9th to 19th century; as well as the influence the region had on the Europeans who pioneered the Orientalist genre in Western art. Collectors and connoisseurs will also be able to view the artistic output of the modern generation of artists, continuing this fascinating thread of historic visual ideas and cultures.

Available items include paintings, rare Ottoman textiles, an Imperial Mughal spinel, a stunning selection of jewelry, and the earliest dated astrolabe dating back to 1020 AD. Notable names of artists whose work will be featured range from prominent female artists such as Fahrelnissa Zeid and Monir Farmanfarmaian to world-renowned painters Georg Emmanuel Opiz and Bahman Mohasess.

The first two auctions took place on Tuesday 25th April. The “20th Century Art/Middle East” auction offers both modern and contemporary art from North Africa, Turkey, the Middle East, and Iran. It comprises seminal and rare works by modern masters from the region. The largest Fahrelnissa Zeid ever to appear at auction and on the market for the first time since 1957 is offered in this seminal auction alongside a large 1968 Bahman Mohassess’ “Requiem Omnibus, from a private American collection, a rare and never before seen Mahmoud Said portrait of a lady, an iconic Monir Farmanfarmaian “Triangle of hope.” Other Iranian artists whose works will be hammered today include: one of Sohrab Sepehri’s “Tree Trunks,” an “untitled work” by Manouchehr Yektaee and Jafar Rouhbakhsh, “Lalam + Lalam” by Hossein Zenderoudi, and“Play with Reality” by Behjat Sadr.

“The Orientale Sale” auction showcases sculptures and paintings that represent the people, landscapes, and customs of North Africa, Egypt, the Levant, Arabia, and the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

“The Arts of the Islamic World” auction will take place on Wednesday 26th April, featuring works that cover multiple continents and are over one thousand years old. Prior to these dates, the exhibition opened to the public on Friday April 21st , 2017.

Source: Farairan

Salt sculpture festival held at Kaji wetland

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Date: 24 April 2017

A salt sculpture festival opened at Kaji wetland, eastern Iran, on Friday 21 April 2017.

Artists from 11 provinces competed against each other in 30 groups during the two-day event.

This is the first time the festival is taking place on the national scale and it has all the potential to go international in the coming years.
برخوردار بودند.

Source: Tehran Times.

Works by celebrated Iranian artists shine at Bonhams

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Date: 15 April 2017

Works of art by a number of celebrated Iranian artists will go under the hammer at the Bonhams auction house sale in London set for April 26.

Works by artists from Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Sudan and Algeria will also be offered at “Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art”, Bonhams has announced on its website.

Being offered are 74 lots, 23 of which belong to Iranian artists with the highest prices.

“Abstract Composition in Brown” by Masud Arabshahi is on sale at an estimated price of $38,000 to 50,000, while Hossein Zenderudi’s “Despina” is on sale at $75,000 to 100,000.

In addition, “Qazvin”, a mirror-mosaic and reverse-glass by Monir Farmanfarmaian, is a high price offering at the sale at $130,000 to 250,000.

Among the highest bids of the night are works by Mahmoud Said (Egypt), Kadhim Hayder (Iraq), Hussein Bicar (Egypt) and Jewad Selim (Iraq).

Abbas Kiarostami, Farideh Lashai, Farhad Moshiri and Mohsen Vaziri-Moqaddam are among other Iranian artists whose works will be auctioned.

Source: Tehran Times

Maryam Jafri’s Welcome to My Age of Anxiety at Laveronica Arte Contemporanea

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Date: 12 April 2017

Maryam Jafari’s first solo exhibition: Welcome to My Age of Anxiety will be held from 15 April to 31 July 2017 at Laveronica arte Contemporanea in Sicily, Italy.

The exhibition investigates soft technologies of power invoking self-care at the heart of their disciplinary apparatus, forming what Jafri calls a global Military-Industrial-Wellness complex.

First however, at the entrance Jafri reprises her 2009 work Nogales, in response to the current political climate in the United States. Nogales pairs a lightbox image of the walled town of Nogales, divided along the US/Mexican border with an edited audio recording of Ronald Reagan’s famous speech at the Berlin Wall. Jafri has edited out specific names—Berlin, Europe, Mr. Gorbachev—but kept the rest of the audio recording intact.

At the heart of the exhibition are two recent sculptures, American Buddhist (2016) and Meditation Square (2016). Resembling meditation altars, the two sculptures explore the use of meditation as a soldier training device by the US Army. Unlike the traditional view of basic training, immortalized most notably by Kubrick’s film Full Metal Jacket in which American soldiers prepare for combat under the training of a sadistic taskmaster, these new techniques deploy a more holistic approach. American Buddhist displays a video of a soldier meditation session on a US Army base in Iraq. The video is a public domain video sourced directly from the US Army.
Meditation Square features a 60 cm bronze replica of the Saddam Hussein statue in Firdos Square being toppled in April 2003 during the Iraq war. Meditation Square literalizes the promise of mind over matter, taking it to its absurd but logical conclusion—the soldiers appear to be destroying the bronze statue with the powers of their own optimized, meditation-fueled brains.

Also on view is the photo series School/Hospital/Prisons (2012), focusing on School, Hospital and Prison theme rooms for S/M role-play. The rooms function as a training ground where institutional discipline is fused with personal fantasy, psychologically internalized and reenacted.

Rounding out the exhibition in the main space is a new series of sculptures called Self-care (2017) on the use of alternative healing systems such as acupuncture, cupping, and yoga. Silicone feet pierced with acupuncture needles, a toilet paper holder with a cut up yoga mat and a Muslim Buddha praying among newspaper detritus are some of the works in this latest series.

Finally, in the cave Jafri presents her film Avalon (2011). In 2001, in an unnamed Asian country, a man known as F.R., was given 700 USD by his father and told to make something of himself. F. R. founded a multi-million dollar clandestine company that secretly exports fetish wear to the West. The dozens of mostly female workers believe themselves to be sewing body bags for the US military, jackets for psychiatric patients and props for circus animals. Juxtaposing the world of the stage with the world of the factory, and performativity with production, the film probes the different but interlocking forms that work takes today, from the production of goods to the production of subjectivity.

Maryam Jafri is an artist working across media and genres – video, sculpture, performance, and photography. Informed by a research based, interdisciplinary process, her artworks are often marked by a visual language poised between film and theater and a series of narrative experiments oscillating between script and document, fragment and whole. She holds a BA in English & American Literature from Brown University, an MA from NYU/Tisch School of The Arts and is a graduate of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.She lives and works in New York and Copenhagen.

Source: Farairan

Works by intl. cartoonists on display at Tehran exhibit

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Date: 10 April 2017

Works by over 25 Iranian and international artists from across the world are currently on display in an exhibition at Iran’s House of Cartoon in Tehran.

Among the cartoonists are Vladimir Kazanevsky from Ukraine, Hicabi Demirci from Turkey, Thomas Antony from India, Cristobal Reinoso from Argentina, Valentin Druzhinin from Russia and Mikio Nakahara from Japan.

Works by Iranian cartoonists Bozorgmehr Hosseinpur, Javad Alizadeh, Masud Ziai and Hadi Tabasi have also been selected for the exhibition.

The exhibition will run until April 20 at the center located at 44 West Golnabi St., off Shariati Ave.

Source: Tehran Times

Iranian Artist Shirin Neshat in the group exhibition: In Search of Global Poetry

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Date: 9 April 2017

The exhibition In Search of Global Poetry: Videos from the Han Nefkens Collection, a collection of 12 videos will run from 16 April to 16 July 2017 at the He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen, China.

The exhibition In Search of Global Poetry: Videos from the Han Nefkens Collection, shows a selection of 12 videos at the He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen, China. Han Nefkens, the well-known Dutch art collector and writer, began building his collection in 2000, and has worked selectively with art museums and other institutions worldwide to exhibit his collection.
The participating artists in this exhibition each offer a different narrative while managing to do so in an unusual way, mixing real life and fiction, sense and sensibility. These works express the artists’ recognition, thought and experimentation as related to the relationship between art and new media in an era of digital technology. Moreover, coming from different corners of the world (including Iran, Switzerland, Lithuania and the USA, amongst others), the artists have completely different backgrounds and origins and belong to very different generations. Their works thus provide a global cultural vision and allow us to clearly understand the ways in which the visual language of video art is employed to express their attitudes, views and transcendental, poetic imaginations in relation to art.
In search of Global Poetry: Videos from the Han Nefkens Collection will be held fro April 16–July 9, 2017

Source: Farairan from E-Flux Newsletter