Whispered Secrets, Murmuring Dreams:
Early Dynamics of How Iranian Art is Establishing its Roots in UK Contemporary Art Market

Janet Rady

London has historically always had a long association with, and been a showcase for, art from the Middle East, and Iran has consistently featured prominently in this representation. 
One only has to think of the superb collections of Persian art in the V&A and British Museum formed in the late 19th Century or the ground breaking International exhibition of Persian art at the Royal Academy in 1931 to appreciate the longevity of this connection.
However, it is only in very recent years that London has become a focus for modern and contemporary Iranian art, firstly in the non-commercial realm and more recently through a series of one-off group selling exhibitions, the latest of which, Whispered Secrets, Murmuring Dreams, is the one being considered here.

The seeds for this interest were first sown by the exhibition entitled Contemporary Iranian Art at the Barbican in 2001. Curated by Rose Issa, an independent curator, producer and writer specialising in visual arts and films from the Middle East, North Africa and Iran, it featured a group of works by thirty four established Iranian artists, both those living in Iran and overseas.

Next, and in recognition of the relatively new post-revolutionary freedoms being granted to the Director, Dr Ali Reza Sami Azar, of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, a selection of pieces from their collection including works by such well known artists as Parviz Tanavoli and Charles Hossein Zenderoudi was shown at Christie’s auction rooms in 2002. 
It is probably fair to say that it was this exhibition that acted as the catalyst for Christie’s well-documented and explosive foray, again with the help of Sami-Azar, into the auction market in Dubai four years later.

Back home in London, Rose Issa continued to promote contemporary Iranian art by holding small solo shows for artists in venues such as Leighton House, where in 2003 Farhad Moshiri first had the opportunity to show his monumental calligraphic pot series outside Iran. However, apart from the popular genre of Iranian cinema, Iranian contemporary art at this time still remained insufficiently well known, outside a select group of cognoscenti, to attract the attention of the mainstream London art world.

Things were beginning to change, however, and by virtue of the political situation in the Middle East; curiosity about the region was being aroused in the UK.
In 2006, interest in Contemporary Middle Eastern art was further heightened by the British Museum’s seminal Word into Art exhibition and programme of related events, which brought together the work of over eighty contemporary artists, not just from Iran, but also from across the Middle East. 
Drawing on the British Museum’s own collection as well as borrowed works, the curator, Venetia Porter chose paintings, works on paper, ceramics, photographs and installations by artists who, inspired by their own cultural heritage, were exploring and interpreting the various forms of Arabic or Farsi script in their work. 
The exhibition was an enormous success, drawing crowds into the Museum well beyond all expectations.

The art world being an essentially commercial creature these days, it was not long before attention was focused on the potentially stratospheric financial rewards of dealing in under represented and undervalued Contemporary Middle Eastern art.  Given the connections that had already been established between London and Dubai (Word Into Art had been sponsored by Dubai Holding), it did not take long for the link to be further strengthened with those responsible for the burgeoning economic development in Dubai. With two triumphal auctions already accomplished by Christie’s in the Emirate in May 2006 and January 2007, the next event in the chain of connections between the two places came in the shape of the first Gulf Art Fair, instigated in March 2007 by the London art dealer and fair organiser, John Martin.
Supported by the DIFC in Dubai, the risk paid off for the participating galleries, particularly those from the Middle East and the Fair was set to become a regular feature in the Dubai Cultural calendar.
With momentum in Middle Eastern art growing both in London and Dubai, the time had now come for these works to be tested seriously on the London Art Market. The first in the line up in quick succession of contemporary Iranian exhibitions was that of cutting edge art organised by the Iranian born, London based artist Neda Dana-Haeri, founder of ParAava. The exhibition opened at the trendy East End NoMoreGrey Gallery in September 2007. Building on the mounting interest from international collectors and an increasing number of biennales in Iran, the show entitled Within and Without was the inaugural exhibition of ParAava’s stock. Billed to celebrate the vibrancy of Iranian art, it focused on ten young Iranian artists living and working both in and out of Iran, the vast majority of whom had already exhibited internationally. Working across different media from painting and drawing, to video installation, sculpture and photography, the artists aimed to break new boundaries, exploring and redefining what it meant to be a modern Iranian artist. 
Next, the Iran Heritage Foundation, under the direction of Maryam Alaghband went for a decidedly more traditional approach. Through her trips to Tehran and contacts in the UK, she brought together a collection of over one hundred paintings, purchased from some thirty young Iranian artists mostly living in Iran, for an exhibition, Broken Promises, Forbidden Dreams, at two stands at the main stream Art London Fair in early October 2007. 
For many visitors to the Fair, it was the first time they had experienced Iranian art. Sales were encouraging and more importantly it gave young artists in Iran, who would not have otherwise had the opportunity to show their work commercially in London, the chance to be represented and discovered on an international scale.
One day after the IHF exhibition closed, the next one, Collected Memories, New Trends in Iranian Painting opened in a private gallery in Mayfair.
Brain-child of the Tehran gallerist, Morad Saghafi, it was essentially the first serious selling exhibition of contemporary Iranian art to be organised in London by a non-London based dealer/curator.
Like his predecessors, Saghafi placed his trust in the saleability of the young artists by personally purchasing their work up front, to sell on his own account in London.  However, in contrast to ParAava and IHF, Saghafi, chose works whose imagery served as a reminder to those who had left their homeland, of the current sociological conditions in Iran, thus appearing consciously to specifically target the expatriate Iranian and Iranophile audience.
The result left many of his British audience cold.

Some two weeks’ later, Sotheby’s in London held their first sale devoted entirely to Modern and Contemporary Arab and Iranian art, the success of which proved that it was not just the phenomenon of Dubai which was driving the market. The carefully selected works including paintings, photographs, and sculptures, of which only three, more established, artists overlapped with those represented in IHF exhibition (Mostafa Dashti, Golnaz Fathi and Farhad Moshiri), two with ParAava’s (Golnaz Fathi and Rokni Haerizadeh) and one with Saghafi’s (Khosrow Hassanzadeh) were highly acclaimed and buyers came from around the globe to secure the lots.

Organising an exhibition is undeniably and long and arduous task often taking months if not years to put together. Whilst all the events of the past year had been unfolding, Fariba Farhad, the London based Director of Candlestar, an international consultancy collaborating with artists across the world and the curator of Whispered Secrets, Murmuring Dreams was making plans for a show.
The original idea for the exhibition of contemporary Iranian art initially started through her involvement in the development of the First Gulf Art Fair in Dubai in 2007; through contacts and friends in Iran she put together a group of galleries who proposed the works of various artists to be exhibited at the Fair. Concurrently, with an eye on the London market, she proposed to give the opportunity to Iranian artists working in the Capital to exhibit at the Dubai Fair as well.
The initial intention was to take a stand at the main Fair, however by the time she had applied, all the spaces in the relatively small hall were taken. Fariba, therefore, turned her attention to the Art Projects, a series of outside installations, conceived around the Fair and as part of these, she was able to successfully install one of Iran’s most eminent sculptors, Parviz Tanavoli’s, iconic heech works. (1)

Following on from the Gulf Art Fair in 2007, Fariba travelled to Iran with the idea for a show for London, based on three generations of Iranian Women artists. At this time, she established the Tehran Office of Candlestar, which led to her introduction to Ferial Salahshour, Director of the Day Art Gallery in Tehran. Together they discussed Fariba’s plans for the exhibition that was to be titled Masques of Shehrezad.  Fariba started looking for a suitable gallery in London and finally decided upon the Mall Galleries, a rental space centrally located off Trafalgar Square, more usually known for its exhibitions of British watercolours. She immediately booked the gallery for March 2009. 

But then, as Fariba explains, the Mall Galleries contacted Candlestar in early January 2008 to ask if they wanted to take a space in April 2008. Although the Masques of Shehrezad was not ready to be shown, as it seemed too good an opportunity to turn down, Fariba accepted the offer. Thus began two and a half months of frenzied activity with the help of Ferial to put together what became Whispered Secrets, Murmuring Dreams. 

Aware of the effect that the sky-rocketing prices of the Dubai art market was having on artists in Iran, Fariba and Ferial took the conscious decision to focus on emerging artists, whom they felt most needed support. The title was chosen as it presents the murmuring dreams and secrets that the past is whispering in the ears of each of these artists. ‘Each of the works starts from a different place, each draws on a different interpretation of past - that is in many cases an extremely personal interpretation - each moderated by a thoroughly modern point of view.’ (2)

The works represent a wide variety of styles that combine the influence of old and new genres in Iranian visual art. Taken together they constitute a celebration of a wide spectrum of creativity and style and an acknowledgement of the very different and even unique voices of artist working in Iran today.
Culturally and artistically, the aim of the exhibition was that it should sit between the trendy East End ParAava show and the more conservative painterly exhibitions of IHF and Saghafi. By doing so, they intended to appeal to a Western audience but at the same time introducing new works with which they may not have been familiar.

Working jointly, Fariba and Ferial came up with a list of approximately fifty artists, of whom they selected twenty four painters and photographers, a number of whom had never shown outside Iran before and several had not been represented in the previous Iranian exhibitions in London. From each of these twenty four artists they chose two to three works, none of which were commissioned especially for the show, an accusation which some have allegedly launched against the auction houses, claiming it to be in a bid to drive up market prices.

Fariba’s co-curator, Ferial Salahshour has some thirty five years’ knowledge of the art world in Iran; commencing with a passion for collecting diverse Iranian historical and contemporary works, the opening of an art gallery seemed a natural progression for her and provided her with an opportunity to pursue her dream of promoting Iranian culture. Whilst dealing in the established artists, now a household name in the auction world such as Parviz Tanavoli, Mohammad Essai and Massoud Arabshahi, she always sensed a responsibility to introduce her clients in Iran to the younger artists.
It was the obvious choice when selecting works for the London exhibition to promote this younger generation.

Unlike the previous exhibitions, Fariba and Ferial worked with the artists on a consignment basis, allowing the artists the freedom to set their own selling prices for the chosen work. It was agreed that any works that remained unsold at the end of the exhibition and after a subsequent showing at the Foreign Press Association, would be returned to Iran. This approach clearly reduced the curators’ financial risk but at the same time, by enabling the interest in the works to be diverted away from their purely commercial aspects towards their inherent aesthetic merits, it engendered a higher level of mutual trust between the artists and curators.

Using Candlestar’s extensive network of contacts in the UK and with a well researched and elaborate marketing programme geared towards established art collectors, word soon spread amongst the community about the exhibition. Potential buyers were calling even before the show opened in order to secure priority viewing of the works. Many sales were made whilst artworks were still being hung. 
Iranians are renowned for loving a good party; the Private View, sponsored by the UK based Magic of Persia Charity, was packed, attracting the attention of Reuters who filmed it as well as the BBC World Service. 
The only criticism levelled at the curators was for the cramped salon-style of hanging the paintings, one above another and with no obvious sense of order, the order that Western audiences would expect from a contemporary gallery exhibition. 

By analysing the results of the exhibition further, one draws some interesting conclusions: Although both curators deemed the show a great success, only a quarter of show sold, with the paintings performing far better than the photographic works. 
The relatively poor performance of the photographs, however, was not unexpected by Fariba, as she is conscious that this market is much tougher than its more traditional painterly counterpart, both in Iran and internationally. 
Perhaps too the emphasis on works with a Western appeal made their saleability more difficult, as buyers were already familiar with this artistic genre, without needing to go looking for it in new markets. 
Of all the works that performed best in the show, they tended to be by those artists who were already known in the international market, such as Shahriar Ahmadi, Samira Alikhanzadeh, Pooya Aryanpour and Sadegh Tirafkan. And of these, only their new work tended to go if it had already been shown elsewhere, then chances were that their collectors already owned it and passed on this occasion. 

Conclusive Thoughts
Candlestar and Day Art Gallery remain positive that Whispered Secrets, Murmuring Dreams is the first of many collaborative projects between their respective ventures in Tehran and London; one question though inflicts itself in this discourse: does this exhibition really mark the turning point in opening up the art of Iran to a Western audience? 
One will have to wait and see. (3)

 

 

*Janet Rady is a London-based cultural operator and Contemporary Arab and Iranian art Consultant; she is a former employee of Sotheby’s.

Footnotes

  1. Personal interview with the author
  2. Idem
  3. more information on Candlestar may be found on their website www.candlestargallery.com)

On the works of Elaheh Norouzian Amiri **
Elaheh Norouzian Amiri had two photographic works in the exhibition, each untitled. The first is of a multicoloured balloon drifting towards the centre of the frame in a cloudy fresh blue sky, semi obscured by the striking and conflicting, horizontally zigzag, black border at the top of the image, which turns out to be the roof of Bath Railway Station (in the West of England).
The conflict between the chilling deathlike lacy black border of the roof and the joyous, life filled, balloon takes on another meaning when it is transposed into an Iranian context. 
Elaheh’s second work depicts a series of brightly coloured tribal scarves from Abiyaneh, a province of Isfahan, hanging on a line set against the contrasting backdrop of a subtly shadowed rock-hewn wall.  Here the readily accessible message is one of unadulterated hope and freedom, life in all its forms of celebration. 

as Amiri herself explains, the use of vibrant colour in her works is her conscious attempt to negate the sadness that she feels other artists in Iran concentrate on portraying. Iran for her ‘is a happy place’, and one where can experience all four seasons in different regions at the same time; it is a rich variety of cultures and influences, from the Arabs in the South to the Russians and cultures of Turkemistan, bordering the North East of Iran, the place where she is most inspired.

Dialogue with Sadegh Tirafkan***
Although initially he had dreamed of becoming a movie director, the reality and strictures of state control of the industry steered Sadegh Tirafkan towards the more private life of fine art photography. Whilst his classmates were encouraged to become landscape photographers, journalists or portraitists (in the style of Cartier Bresson), he preferred to take a more artistic approach to his work, which surprised his tutors. 

In November 1996, and still living in Iran, Tirafkan was one of five Iranian photographers chosen (including Kiarostami) to exhibit at the Mois de photographie in Paris. This was to be the start of his career outside the country and became the impetus for his move to New York in 1997, where he met other international artists; inspired by the more conceptual work, he went back to Iran to work on the first video installation ever to be produced in Iran, Persepolis that he again showed at the Seyhoun Gallery. Other works followed, such as his collaborative Ashoura installation at the Tehran Museum of Modern Arts, as well as Secret of Words also installed at TMOCA, Iranian Man and Whispers of the East.
Throughout his works Tirafkan persistently deals with masculinity, and by reflecting on the role of the Iranian male in the present time, extends this further to the decline in society in general today.
Other themes running through his work tackle the history of Iran through its culture, art, philosophy, literature (in particular the epic Shahnameh), identity, religion and gender issues. 
Tirafkan current series, The Loss of Our Identity featured in Whispered Secrets, Murmuring Dreams, violently imposes symbols from historical Persian art onto portraits of contemporary Iranians, and by so doing explores the effect an increased presence of Western sensibilities and influences has had on the youth of present-day Iran and the cultural losses they are suffering by succumbing to it. In the period since he was at school in Iran and now, he comments that the children, rather than aspiring to become doctors or engineers as before, today yearn towards a career as a singer or an actress.  As an artist, Tirafkan feels it is his role and duty to guide the students and give them an opportunity to appreciate the richness of their culture and historical past.
Tirafkan’s experience of exhibiting in London has been a positive start; it is London which he feels, in preference to New York or Paris, is best placed to embrace the emergence of this new cosmopolitan view of the world of Contemporary Middle Eastern art.

** Elaheh Norouzian Amiri is born in 1963 in Tehran; Elaheh’s career as a photographer started from the four year period in which she owned her own digital printing and design company, Shamet Ltd.  Other artists who saw her work at that time encouraged her to concentrate more on her photography and to become an artist herself.  To date, she has exhibited in one solo show at the company’s own gallery in Tehran and prior to this exhibition had not shown at all outside Iran.

*** Sadegh Tirafkan is born in Iraq in 1965 to Iranian parents, his family fled back to Khuzestan in Iran before the Revolution. One of a number of siblings, Sadegh’s family was traditional business people and teachers, and had no connection with the arts.  Yet from a young age, Sadegh was passionate about the theatre and acting. After graduating from High School, he decided to study photography and enrolled in the Tehran Fine Art University. After graduating from University in 1989, Tirafkan continued to expand his field of study and enrolled in private classes in art, sculpture and filmmaking. In the 1990’s he decided to go back to photography. He had his first solo show of portraits at the Seyhoun Gallery in Tehran in 1990.  Although it met with bad reviews from the press not used to his controversial and then conceptual ideologies, he was not deterred, as he knew exactly where he wanted to go with his work.


 

 
 
Back to Volume III Essays