MONIR SHAHROUDY FARMANFARMAIAN: WORKS ON PAPER

Conversation changes people. Since meeting in 2008, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian have held numerous conversations that have brought to life the incredible saga of this Iranian pioneer and had a transformative effect on Obrist himself. This intimate book of drawings, which wed the cosmic patterning of traditional Islamic geometry with the rhythms of modern Western geometric abstraction, is interwoven with an extended interview by Obrist with Farmanfarmaian, Etel Adnan, and Frank Stella that tells the story behind these painstakingly crafted works on paper that play a central role in the artist’s principles of repetition and progression. Published on the occasion of Infinite Possibility at the Solomon R. Guggenheim in New York, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfaraian: Works on Paper is a snapshot of a fascinating and highly important facet of the artist’s work.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Born in 1924 in the ancient Persian city of Qazvin, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian spent her childhood in an old house replete with stained glass, wall paintings, and nightingales. Coming of age during World War II, she left occupied Iran and audaciously set out for New York, where she was absorbed into the city’s thriving avant-garde scene. In the decades to follow, which included a return to Tehran followed once again by exile in New York, and finally in her sixties returning to live in Tehran to work with her beloved craftsman. The first retrospective exhibition of the artist’s reverse mirror-based works and geometric drawings, Infinite Possibility, opened at the Serralves Foundation in Porto, Portugal, in 2014, and travels to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in March 2015.

Texts by Akin Adesokan, Moses Serubiri, Harmony Holiday, Semeneh Ayalew, Hassan Musa, Emmanuel Iduma, Michael McMillan, Dominique Malaquais and Cedric Vincent, Molefe Pheto, Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Hermano Penna and Alice Aterianus.