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Perceptions of Iran in the West tend to be media-driven, reducing an entire region to depictions of political turmoil and civil unrest. Protests triggered by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of the self-proclaimed morality police this fall, for example, are a prime example of how a single narrative can be mistaken for the entire story.
But with the opening of Monir Farmanfarmaian: A Mirror Garden (through April 9), visitors at the High Museum of Art can explore a rich history of Persian art and culture from the perspective of one of Iran’s most revered visual artists. This is the first posthumous exhibition at an American museum for Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (1922–2019) and objects on view include sculptures, drawings, textiles and collages spanning four decades, from 1976 to 2019.
The centerpiece is a series of large-scale mirror mosaics — the first of which, Untitled (Muqarnas), was acquired by the High in 2019.
“The wings [in that work] are selfie-central,” says Michael Rooks, the museum’s curator of modern and contemporary art, in reference to the glittering installation. “The visual experience changes as you shift from one foot to another. You become active in the surface — seeing yourself reflected, fragmented and abstracted. It’s interactive and, I hate to use the word, fun.”
In Persian culture, the sculptural practice of using mirrors in funerary monuments and shrines was intended to uplift worshippers spiritually by representing light reflected into infinity.
In Farmanfarmaian’s case, her takeaway from a trip to Shah Cheragh mosque in Shiraz was nothing short of mind-altering. “I imagined myself standing inside a many-faceted diamond and looking out at the sun,” she wrote in A Mirror Garden: A Memoir, co-authored by Zara Houshmand. “It was a universe unto itself, architecture transformed into performance, all movement and fluid light, all solids fractured and dissolved in brilliance in space, in prayer. I was overwhelmed.”
Compelled by the art form but unable to apprentice any masters — men were permitted to pass the skill on to their sons but not their daughters or any women, for that matter — Farmanfarmaian enlisted a coterie of craftsmen and got to work. In the process, she elevated Iranian decorative arts, modernized an ancient tradition and created abstractions for the purpose of aesthetic pleasure as opposed to making objects in veneration of the passing of loved ones.
“Iran was a different place when Monir started doing this in the late 1960s,” says Caroline Giddis, curatorial research associate and Rooks’ co-curator of the exhibition. “It was more relaxed socially, morally and politically and closely aligned with progressivism and democratic values.”
A child of the Qazvin province — birthplace of many contemporary artists — Farmanfarmaian grew up in a large mercantile family whose holdings included vast pistachio orchards and a well-appointed home with beautifully cultivated gardens. The refined aesthetic extended to her childhood bedroom, where paintings of ornamental motifs, flora and fauna covered every inch of the ceiling.
Fortunately, memories of the charmed existence persisted and shaped her creative evolution despite the Iranian Revolution, during which all of her artwork was either confiscated by the government, stolen, sold, distributed or destroyed by other bad actors; her forced migration in 1979; a quarter-century exile in New York and subsequent repatriation at the age of 80, when she reopened her studio in Tehran and invited her former collaborators to reëstablish their practice.
The High’s survey was made possible thanks to a significant gift to The Woodruff Arts Center by the Farideh & Al Azadi Foundation in an effort to present work by Persian artists and to engage the Persian community. The collection covers the arc of Farmanfarmaian’s career, beginning with her student days in New York, where she attended Parsons School of Design, Cornell University and The Arts Student League.
She went on to dress windows at R. H. Stearns, illustrate ads and design Bonwit Teller’s signature violet logo, hire Andy Warhol as a graphic designer and become part of a salon that included Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder and Louise Nevelson. Over time, she became known for her preservation of Iran’s heritage through interpretations of Persian mythology, Sufi cosmologies and Islamic architecture in her artwork.
Upcoming events at the High include a book talk with Houshmand, who will share her memories of growing up in Iran with Farmanfarmaian. Homeschool Days — Monir Farmanfarmaian, comprising docent-led tours in the galleries and workshops in the Greene Family Education Center, will help to round out the picture. Likewise, Bahman Kiarostami’s documentary film Monir (2015) renders the portrait of an artist at the peak of her career.
“Monir was a trailblazing woman who directed a studio full of men and bossed them around,” says Giddis. “Her incredible life, resilience and adaptability while staying true to her roots and methods is more important than ever with what’s going on in Iran today.”
Moreover, says Rooks, “Farmanfarmaian’s micro mosaics, which reference fundamental Sufi principles of unity and multiplicity,” are worth contemplating and emulating if we hope to live up to the goal of achieving a more perfect union here at home.
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Gail O’Neill is an ArtsATL editor-at-large. She hosts and coproduces Collective Knowledge a conversational series that’s broadcast on THEA Network, and frequently moderates author talks for the Atlanta History Center.
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