Evolution and Revolution through three generations of Iranian artists

Two years in the planning, The Masques of Shahrazad was a groundbreaking project led by Candlestar director Fariba Farshad, which showcased thirty years of work by Iranian women artists.  The project’s first manifestation was an exhibition, presented in collaboration with Day Art Gallery, Tehran, of 28 Iranian women artists held at The Mall Galleries, London, in March 2009. Opening thirty years on from the upheavals of the Iranian Revolution, the Masques of Shahrazad was an opportunity to survey the Iranian artistic landscape of the last three decades. The exhibition received significant international media attention, being featured on Al Jazeera and the BBC as well as in the Financial Times, Guardian, British Satellite News and The Times amongst others.

This project took its cue and inspiration from Shahrazad, or Sheherazade, as the heroine of A Thousand and One Nights is often called. Like the legendary storyteller, the participating artists have had to adopt feints and stratagems, beguiling, charming and evading authority to sustain their artistic endeavours.

The exhibition included work by celebrated Iranian artists such as Pariyoush Ganji, Maryam Javaheri, Mansoureh Hosseini, Farideh Lashai, Golnaz Fathi, and Farah Ossouli, alongside younger artists who are beginning to register on the international art scene, such as Samira Alikhanzadeh, Shadi Ghadirian and Tahereh Samadi Tari. The Masques of Shahrazad illustrated themes that ranged from time to politics. Each generation of artists dealt with these themes in very different ways, but there was a shared sense of identity and heritage, expressed through reinterpretations of the Iranian creative vernacular.

For the opening of the exhibition, Fariba Farshad said: ‘Gradually, Iran’s female artists have engineered a shift in the limitations and barriers that constrained their predecessors, and have cleverly turned their weaknesses into strengths. Each of the three generations of artists we have selected for this show have had to evolve their own strategy to circumvent authority and express themselves, overcoming their fears and showing things that other people are afraid of expressing. Their works are sharp, subtle and perhaps subversive, without appearing to be any of these things; this is the genius of the masque. And a strange thing has happened: the decision to be an artist is no longer frowned upon. Many of the parents of this new generation of artists know what Shahrazad knew – that a path to a kind of liberation lies in the making of art.’

Please contact us or visit our Art Sales page if you would like to enquire about any of the works from the exhibition.