ART IRAN: Falling into Language presents nine diaspora Iranian artists who engage diverse forms of the Persian alphabet, handwriting, text, and fragments as a way to remain connected to their cultural inheritance and form an essential part of their artistic practice. Through the use of Persian script in painting, geometric patterning, and installation, the artists maintain a solid relationship to the Persian language as a visual and symbolic component to longing for a homeland and unity beyond borders. Throughout, political upheavals affect the diaspora and notions of identity. Despite their efforts, assimilation is never complete; all these artists remain foreigners worldwide. However, what they bring into this new state of alienation might ultimately describe a different kind of cosmopolitanism—precisely because it belongs nowhere, it is at home everywhere. The text in these works is not necessarily there to be read. It is instead there to be seen. In many ways, the audience’s inability to read these letters captures the in-between state that is the artists’ daily reality. In Persian culture’s relationship to the written language, written words are often conflated with the senses and are not purely a matter of intellect.  

Exhibition artists: Parastou Forouhar, Taraneh Hemami, Hadieh Shafie, Maryam Palizgir, Shadi Yousefian, Neda Moridpour, Pouya Afshar, Elnaz Javani, and Golnar Adili. 

ART IRAN: Falling into Language is curated by Roshanak Gezelbash and Hoda Rahbarnik. This exhibition is part of an ongoing collaboration between Farhang Foundation and Craft Contemporary.

Image captions: 

Image Above: Elnaz Javani, My Effigies. Stuffed object made of white muslin fabric, Hand sewn with black thread, covered the external layer with stories in Farsi & Azari calligraphy. Variable Dimension. Photo credit: Artist 

Image Below: Alphabet of Silence, 2006. Installation, wood panels, variable depth, paper and encaustic on wood panel; and 16 sculptures, paper and encaustic on air-dry clay, 72” x 2” x 72”. Private collection

Written Room, since 1995. Site-specific work, acrylic paint. Courtesy of the artist

EXHIBITION CATALOG