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Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian at her exhibition opening at The Third Line, Dubai, March 2013
Courtesy of The Third Line
“At a time when most Iranian women were living through the contradictions of World War II-occupied Iran in the late 1940s, Monir Farmanfarmaian, an aspiring artist from Qazvin, was making her way to America in what seems an almost accidental, if not charmed, set of circumstances. The daughter of a man who had been steeped in the tradition of Islamic thought and scholarship but who had disavowed Islam at the sudden and unexpected death of his mother, she was given innumerable and unusual opportunities for a woman of her generation.”
— A Mirror Garden: A Memoir
At age 92, Iranian artist Monir Farmanfarmaian shows no signs of slowing down. She lives on her own in Tehran, where she works in her studio each day, producing the mirror sculptures (which she refers to as “geometric families”) upon which she built her career, as well as drawings, carpets, other types of sculptures, and, most recently, jewelry. In January, she will travel to Dubai to attend the opening of her show, Infinite Geometry, at The Third Line gallery’s new space on Al Serkal Avenue in the Al Quoz industrial area.
The road to this show was not linear for Monir, and the trajectory of her career is as untraditional as the work she produces. Born in Iran in 1924, Monir moved to New York in the ‘40s to attend Parsons School of Design and, later, Cornell University. It was in New York that she began creating art, and upon returning to Tehran, she started working with a craftsman on the mirror sculptures that are now her hallmark.
Monir Farmanfarmaian in her studio working on Heptagon Star, Tehran, 1975 Courtesy of The Third Line
Monir Farmanfarmaian with her relief work, 1970s Courtesy of The Third Line
Monir in her salon, Tehran 1975, as seen in the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art catalogue Courtesy of The Third Line
Felt tip marker and pen on paper Courtesy of The Third Line
Maze 1 - Mirror and reversed glass painting on plaster and wood Courtesy of The Third Line
Maze 2 - Mirror and reversed glass painting on plaster and wood Courtesy of The Third Line
Naturally dyed silk and wool hand-woven in Tabriz Courtesy of The Third Line
While Monir was creating more and more work, her career came to a halt when the Iranian Revolution broke out—and only four years after returning to Iran, Monir, her husband, and their daughters fled to New York, where she was without the studio and supplies that were essential to her budding career. In New York, Monir turned to drawing, carpet and textile design, and collage, and some of the pieces she created will be on display for the first time at The Third Line next month. Additionally, Monir, who signs her work simply with her first name, will display some of her most well-known work, including pieces that were on view at her first comprehensive exhibit at the Guggenheim in New York last year.
Though she has been creating art almost all her life, to be discovered for your craft at age 80 is a rarity; to continue to be celebrated for it over a decade later is even rarer. But this is the arc of Monir’s career. The attention she began to attract after going widely unrecognized for decades is, according to Sunny Rahbar, co-owner of The Third Line gallery, due in large part to art critic Hans Ulrich Obrist, who included Monir in a 2008 series he was doing on forgotten artists. Even if Monir’s sudden and perhaps unexpected celebrity is directly related to Obrist’s much-coveted stamp of approval, the buzz around her work has only been amplified over the years, a testament to her facility as an artist.
The Third Line’s new space (a renovated warehouse that aims to stray from the traditional structure of an art gallery) is indeed a suitable platform for Monir’s new show, which will be her largest in the region thus far. For Rahbar, selecting Monir as the first artist to show in the gallery’s new location was an obvious choice. The Third Line has been working with Monir since its opening in 2005, and the gallery’s evolution and expansion is nicely mirrored by Monir’s growth as an artist. With a move to a larger and more accommodating space at Al Serkal Avenue, The Third Line is part of a transformative moment in Dubai’s art scene. Monir, too, is part of the texture of the contemporary art scene in the Middle East, reinterpreting and infusing the traditions of the region into her work.
For more posts in the #CraftTheFuture series, click here.
