Tehran NOW: Iranian Platform

ASIA NOW has chosen to invite its community to be aware - under the particularly stimulating auspices of American anthropologist Anna L. Tsing - and to question the theme of the Arts of Living in a Damaged Planet.

Awareness from the territories point of view, by widening its scope towards Western Asia, by welcoming to Paris artists who now live and work in Iran. Among the 40 international, European, and French galleries, some of which will present artists from the Iranian diaspora, eight galleries directly from Tehran will be present.

+2 Gallery - Aaran Gallery - Ab-Anbar Gallery - Azad Art Gallery - Bavan Gallery - Etemad Gallery - Mohsen Gallery

These galleries were selected by an artistic committee composed of Jean- Marc Decrop (collector of Asian art), Aria Kasaei (co-founder of Studio Kargah who signs the graphic identity of the event), Odile Burluraux (curator at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris), and the artistic directors contributing to the platform's projects: Fereydoun Ave, Maneli Keykavoussi, Kamran Diba, Leila Varasteh and Vida Zaim, Behnood Javaherpour - based on an idea by Tatiana Gecmen Waldeck and Anahita Vessier.

Tehran is home to some fifty contemporary art galleries and currently has a very active market, supported by local collectors. Considered as the most cutting-edge of the Iranian contemporary art scene, the galleries selected here support about sixty artists whose works are rarely accessible to the European public. This new generation of visual artists "reveals itself much more in introspection (rather than in the Revolution or in the war), questioning gender or environmental issues" all media included. It forms a very active scene resulting from a thousand-year-old civilization that went through many turbulences.

Several international galleries also represent artists from the Iranian diaspora, most of which are based in Paris: Danysz - Icy & Sot -, La La Lande - Alireza Shojaian - , LJ -Nastaran Shahbazian -, Nathalie Obadia - Hoda Kashiha -, Noushine Pahlevan - Sepand Danesh -, Perrotin - Farhad Moshiri - and Praz-Delavallade - Golnaz Payani - and Galerie Félix Frachon from Brussels - Tahmineh Monzavi -, while the HdM gallery -Mohammad Banissi - is based in London and Beijing.

In addition to their presence on the booths of these various French and Iranian galleries, Iranian women artists are given another perspective through video. A sector dedicated to a video program showcasing ten Iranian women artists - Atousa Bandeh Ghiasabad, Samira Eskandarfar, Parisa Ghaderi, Elika Hedayat, Anahita Hekmat, Shiva Khosravi, Tahmineh Monzavi, Melika Shafahi, Rojin Shafiei, Sanaz Sohrabi - has been curated by Odile Burluraux, curator at the Musée d’art modern in Paris. Entitled "Burning Wings", this program is dedicated to the Iranian poetess Forough Farrokhzad (1934-1967), whose premonitory verse "Do not seal my lips with the padlock of silence, for I have an untold story in my heart" is highlighted. For the curator, "women artists living in Iran or in the diaspora use video to make works that reflect the complexity of their relationship to the world. The video works express a trend observed in the past of personal and intimate narratives that take on a more militant tone over time".

Farideh Lashai Foundation showcases several works by the artist. Throughout her distinguished career spanning over five decades, Farideh Lashai (1944-2013) has always juggled with varying means of expression, without recognizing any frontiers that might confine her to a rigidly defined artistic identity. Other Iranian artists are presented and supported by the Behnoode Foundation founded five years ago by Behnood Javaherpour, an Iranian fashion designer and art curator living in Italy.