![Sample our Arts journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110799/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Arts.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This visual essay explores a number of artistic and curatorial practices in which the archive acts as a primary tool for rereading histories. Contemporary art reveals a growing interest in the use of archival material and in the formation of new archives inside and outside institutions. Considering the archive as a series of documented and preserved knowledge, one motivation for such attentiveness could be the merging of artistic productions with curatorial practices. Building my argument on Irit Rogoff's analysis of curatorial practice as an “epistemic structure”, I examine how archives have the potential to produce knowledge against historical forgetfulness. Furthermore, the process of sustainable changes within the museums, as discussed by Peter Osborne, is studied here as another motive for the increasing use of archives in contemporary art. This is done by focused examinations of a research-based exhibition, Karnameh: Visual Culture of Iranian Children (1950-1980); two curatorial projects (one temporary and one ongoing), respectively Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art's Poster and the Archaeology of the Final Decade (AOTFD) and lastly an installation art piece, Documentation. Through these examples, I argue how working with archives, especially in conflicted places, is crucial to help with recovering erased histories and accumulating shattered memories.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 A conversation between Irit Rogoff and Beatrice von Bismarck, ‘Curating/Curatorial’, in Bismarck, Schafaff, and Weski (Citation2012, Citation23).
2 Teer Art is a privately funded art initiative in Tehran, established in 2019, that promotes contemporary and modern Iranian art both commercially and educationally through art fair and curatorial projects. For more information, visit: www.teerart.com.
3 Following the opening of a non-profit artist-run space called Rasht Club 29 by Kamran Diba, Parviz Tanavoli and Roxana Saba, the long-term plan for a contemporary museum found government support, and thus the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art was built and inaugurated in 1977. For more information, see Kamran Diba – Fereydoun Ave, Tehran in the 1970s, Art Dubai Global Art Forum, Citation2010, accessible on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_-5ENVLsxw.
4 For more information on the TMOCA collection, see Mirsepassi (Citation2019) and Stein (Citation2020).
5 Even so, during Mohammad Khatami's presidency known as the reformists’ phase (1997–2005) and under a new directorship, new-media arts were welcomed, and this reshaped the involvement of the ‘artistic community’ within the museum for a certain period of time.
6 The photographs were presented for the first time in form of photo-essays by the artist and published in the local newspaper Ayandegan in 1977, and they were exhibited at Tehran University on 1 May 1978, International Workers’ Day, but the show was closed down. Further information can be found in the project's brochure, available at: http://valimahlouji.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/with-cover-Recreating-the-Citadel-Booklet-2018-LR-New-12.04.18.pdf.
7 Qaleh reveals the straitened circumstances of the Citadel and its locals in the midst of the booming modernisation plans [the White Revolution project (1963–1979) launched by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi]. Through a series of interviews with the sex workers and the locals, and the narrated text, their poverty-stricken condition is set against the backdrop of the rapid and aggressive modernisation plan. ‘The film was produced on behalf of the Organisation of Iranian Women and was immediately banned while shooting was still going on. After the revolution, a portion of the material was found, and Shirdel decided to finish the film using photos by the late Kaveh Golestan that were taken more than ten years after the film itself was shot’. Available at: https://archive.org/details/Qaleh-WomensQuarter1966-1980.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Recreating the Citadel is the title of the exhibition of Prostitute series and its archive at the Tate Modern, 2017.
11 ‘Arkhe, we recall, names at once the commencement and the commandment. This name apparently coordinates two principles in one: the principle according to nature or history, there where things commence – physical, historical or ontological principle – but also the principle according to the law, there where men and gods command, there where authority, social order are exercised, in this place from which order is given – nomological principle’. Ibid.
12 The chain murders were brutal manslaughters of more than eighty writers, poets, political activists, lawyers and singers from 1988 to 1998 that appeared to be linked and were carried out by the government's internal operatives. For more information see Fadaee (Citation2012, 88).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Fereshte Moosavi
Fereshte Moosavi is a curator, lecturer and writer based in London. She holds a PhD from the Curatorial/Knowledge programme at the Visual Cultures Department of the Goldsmiths University of London. Her practice is focused on the production of knowledge at the encounter between art and the public and has mainly worked on contemporary and modern Iranian art. From 2011 to 2018, she worked as the art director and curator of the MOP Foundation where she co-curated numerous exhibitions and public events in collaboration with museums and art institutions in the United States, Europe and West Asia. Moosavi is the founder of Curatorial, in Other Words, an educational platform which explores different abilities of curatorial practice by organising lectures, symposiums, exhibitions and panel discussions in collaboration with local and international artists, curators and researchers since 2015 in Tehran. Moosavi has curated many research-based exhibitions including “Once There Was (N)one”, April–May 2023, at No Man's Art Gallery, Amsterdam; “Two–Way Street: Koorosh Shishegaran”, Jan 2020, at Bermondsey Project Space, London; “Ali Akbar Sadeghi: A Retrospective”, at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Jan–Mar 2018 and “Trans-Transfiguration: Sheikh Saafi's Anecdote and any Expandable Thing” May–Jul 201, at Lajevardi Foundation, Tehran, to name a few. She is the editor of In Creating Objects: Farhad Ahrarnian, Hossein Valamanesh, (2022) and AliAkbar Sadeghi: A Retrospective (2018) and has many articles published in various magazines and platforms.