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ABSTRACT
This special issue explores the multifaceted landscape of the contemporary art of Iran, unveiling diverse approaches to historical narratives and cultural memory while challenging the concept of a ‘correct history.’ Focused on the post-revolutionary period, the essays scrutinise how Iranian artists navigate and contest an ideologically structured history imposed by the political system. This structured history, often divergent from creative historical understanding, prioritises abstract ideals and diminishes alternative perspectives. Central questions explored include how contemporary Iranian artists position themselves in relation to history and cultural memory, manifesting their way of looking in their works. Examining strategies such as irony, fantasy, intertextuality and deconstruction, these artists engage in critical re-tellings of a past that persists in haunting the present. Their creations reflect on the self by narrating history, contributing to the ongoing debate on historical narratives. The essays investigate how contemporary art practices in Iran grapple with social, cultural and political issues, including censorship, transforming challenges into critical tools that give rise to a multi-faceted aesthetics of resistance. The issue sheds light on these alternative approaches and elaborates on the broader discourse on artistic engagement with historical and socio-political contexts.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The initiatives were to be executed through cultural planning and organisation, involving the establishment of various cultural centres aimed at reviving the grandeur of ancient Iran. Among these enterprises were the approval of a law concerning the preservation of historical antiquities in 1930, the founding of the Iran-e Bastan (Ancient Iran) Museum in 1937, the National Library of Iran in 1939, both situated in Tehran, and the Pars Museum in Shiraz in 1936.
2 For further exploration of the role of icons and monuments in shaping a national identity in Iran in modern period, see Merhavy Citation2019.
3 For full examination of this concept, see Haghayeghi Citation1993.
4 For examination of the concept of cultural authenticity and its definition by the Iranian state, as well as artistic resistance, see Keshmirshekan Citation2013.
5 See Keshmirshekan Citation2023b, 221–240.
6 It refers to the systematic killing of intellectuals, known as the ‘chain murders’ (Qatl-ha-ye zanjireh-i), which occurred in Iran during the 1990s. The chain murders constituted a sequence of targeted killings and disappearances involving Iranian intellectuals who had expressed criticism of the Islamic Republic system. These incidents seemed to be interconnected. The victims comprised over eighty individuals, encompassing writers, poets, translators and political activists.
7 For examination of the strategies employed by artists within the context of localised historical and cultural landscapes, see Keshmirshekan Citation2011; Citation2023b, 199–220. Also, for exploration of the ways artists employ strategies such as humour, irony and satire to counter the imposed forces while resisting state prescriptions and striving to reclaim their cultural spaces, see Keshmirshekan Citation2023b, 268–286.
8 See also Foroutan’s essay ‘Visual Articulacy and Periphrasis in the Art of the Unmentionable’ in this issue.
9 See Pamela Karimi’s essay, ‘History, Heritage, and the Site-specific in Contemporary Iranian Art’ in this issue.
10 For full examination of the concept of phantasmagorical representation in the works of contemporary artists from Iran, see Keshmirshekan Citation2023c, 15–28.
11 For full examination of Ghazali’s ‘Persepolis: 2560–2580’ project, see Keshmirshekan Citation2023a.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Hamid Keshmirshekan
Hamid Keshmirshekan is an art historian, art critic and Senior Teaching Fellow at the School of Arts, SOAS, University of London. He was previously Associate Fellow at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and History of Art Department at Oxford University (2004-21), Senior Lecturer and head of History of Art department at the Advanced Research Institute of Art (ARIA), Iranian Academy of Arts (2013-17), Research Associate at the London Middle East Institute (2013-19), and Chief Editor of the quarterly Art Tomorrow – the bilingual (English-Persian) journal on modern and contemporary art of the Middle East and its diaspora (2009-13). He received his PhD in History of Art from SOAS, University of London in 2004 and was post-doctoral fellow at KRC, Oxford University (2004-5, 2008-9, 2011-13) supported by the British Academy, AHRC and ESRC. Since 1994 he has taught art history and theory in British and Iranian universities, has organised several international conferences and events on aspects of modern and contemporary art of Iran and the MENA region, and has contributed extensively to various publications, including The Art of Iran in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries: Tracing the Modern and the Contemporary (2023); ‘Humorous Art Practices in the Contemporary Middle East: Reacting to Cultural Stereotypification’, (2024), and Contemporary Art from the Middle East: Regional Interactions with Global Art Discourses (ed.) (2015).