Being Parviz Tanavoli: a note by Zainub Verjee

Being Parviz Tanavoli: a note by Zainub Verjee

Zainub Verjee in conversation with Parviz Tanavoli
Zainub Verjee in conversation with Parviz Tanavoli

In November 2015, I was invited to speak at the Aga Khan Museum on the exhibition Home Ground: Contemporary Art from the Barjeel Foundation. Reflecting critically on issues of identity and modernity my presentation titled “Elsewhere, Within Here: The Politics of Home”, I spoke about Parviz Tanavoli, invoking the notion of modernity and idea of belonging.

I brought forth Tanavoli’s own words and circumstance in a recent interview, expressing his ambivalence: “When people abroad question me, I’m embarrassed, to tell you the truth. They say, ‘Okay, you are a Canadian, you’re living in Vancouver [since 1989], why don’t you have a show in Vancouver?’ I [don’t have] an answer. Why am I not taken seriously here? Why?”

Since Aga Khan Museum programmed a solo exhibition of Abbas Kiarostaami in the same year, I posed: wouldn’t it have been a powerful intervention to have shown Tanavoli’s work along with Kiarostaami’s?

Parviz’s question “Why am I not taken seriously here? Why?” directs us to the arc of art history, where the notion of modernity is rooted in its European consciousness. My work over the last three decades in Canada bears witness to this constant negotiation. As the refrain goes, this is not art but ethnic art fits well within the false premise of a multicultural promise! I can imagine Tanavoli’s frustration and cynicism.

After World War II and the decolonization which followed, new contested engagements began between the new centres (read: nations) trying to articulate the tension between modernization and tradition; indigeneity and modernity; and, internationalization and globalization. This led to many sites and forms of contemporary arts. Contemporary art diverges from major movements of late modern art in Europe and subsequently in North America. Given the narrative of modernity as a European project, it is implied that there never has been an “authentic” modernity in the Islamic world. On the other hand, there is ambiguity in the nomenclature of Islamic Art as there is a lack of inquiry of emergent modern Islamic societies. In this context, the forging of the contemporary Iranian self is at the cross-section of visual practices and an imagination of an idea of Iran and its histories. The terrain of such sensitivities underline the chasm between the Islamic art history of Iran and the narrative of global art of contemporary Iran. In Tanavoli’s work we often see this lived tension and how he articulates the relationship between tradition and the experience of the modern.

In Iran, the advent of modernity can be associated with the Qajar dynasty (1779-1924) and its sustained patronage of visual arts. At the end of the 19th century we see emergence of large scale oil paintings on religious subjects, displayed publicly and meant for the masses. The development of Iranian painting continued to the reign of Reza Shah (1925-41) under the Pahlavi dynasty. Soon, Coffee houses emerged as the central sites for narration (storytelling) and paintings. This led to a new tradition which came to be known as the Qahavakhaneh, the Coffee house, paintings. During the Pahlavi dynasty, a range of socio-political factors led to Iranian contemporary art as a successor to centuries of brilliant Persian miniature painting. Artistic and cultural expression infused the new nationalist spirit, re-appropriating the national heritage towards nation building.

In mid 20th century, one of the boldest example of this is seen in the Saqqakhaneh movement, a term coined by prominent art critic Karim Emami in 1963. Tanavoli, a foremost modern sculptor, was the co-founder along with Charles Hossein Zenderoudi of the influential Saqqakhaneh ––a post-traditional movement ––invoking Iran’s heritage. Charles Hossein Zebderoudi, a contemporary of Parviz Tanavoli would show his work at Tanavoli’s studio, the Atelier Kaboud. It was Emami who compared Zenderoudi’s raw materials to objects found in a Saqqakhaneh leading to the birth and baptism of a movement. A Saqqakhaneh is a ceremonial public structure dispensing water for thirsty passers-by. Interestingly, people embed multiple meanings and role to this structure: for some it becomes a site of everyday affirmation of faith, of their aspirations and of remembrance. Each is signified through signs and symbols that invokes the memory of the seventh century Shiite martyrs who were denied access to water in the battle of Karbala. Often, at these structures one sees a brass hand that symbolizes the severed hand of Hazrat Abbas who attempted in vain to fetch water. Other objects are padlocks or pieces of cloth knotted around the grillwork. As we see, Zenderoudi’s works attempt to reconcile modernity and religion through a vernacular path invoking Islamic symbolism and yet not creating any form of opposition to local traditions. This represents the classical phase of contemporary arts that offered a comfortable mold for the Iranian identity.

After studying sculpture at Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan (1960), and a teaching stint at Minneapolis College of Arts and Design (1961-63) Tanavoli returned to Tehran to become head of Sculpture at Tehran University until 1979. Tanavoli set out to be a sculptor finding refuge in the story of Farhad to anchor his practice. In 1965, he began his heech (Farsi for nothing / nothingness) sculptures as a protest, against the empty overuse of calligraphy and the individuals, the institutions and the market that embraced this nothingness/emptiness. To quote Tanavoli: “Mine was the nothingness of hope and friendship, a nothingness that did not seek to negate.”

Zainub Verjee speaking at Critics Forum, Toronto: 3 critics and 3 exhibtions
Zainub Verjee speaking at Critics Forum, Toronto: 3 critics and 3 exhibtions

It is virtually impossible to separate his work as an artist from his passionate engagement as a teacher, researcher, collector and writer. These complex related engagements are best represented by Tanavoli’s life-long preoccupation with the padlock! It is not feasible to elaborately discuss him in this space, but I attempt to offer a small lens through which his work can be accessed, meanings understood and the artist and his oeuvre, appreciated.

Tanavoli began building a body of work that sourced material from classical Persian literature, folk art, Islamic traditions and calligraphy provocatively creating new meaning and developing a particular iconography. As the heech series transformed the existential cry of nothingness into a Persian allegory, Tanavoli like a Saqqakhaneh, seemed to satisfy the thirst for defining a national modern art in Iran.

It was clear that after the 1979 Islamic Revolution radical changes would occur in the art policy of the state. Saqqakhaneh movement was supported by the pre-revolutionary state as an ‘official art”. Given the lack of alliance with the Islamic Revolution and its aspirations, its artists began migrating. A decade after Iran’s 1979 revolution, Tanavoli left the country that had inspired his greatest work. Thus, we see Tanavoli landing in Vancouver, B.C. in 1989.

During the decades of 60s and 70s, Naqqashi-khatt (Calligraphy painting) also inspired many Iranian artists who continued their artistic practice as their works contained narratives directly related to the Islamic tradition emphasised by the new regime. After the revolution ended, there was no concentrated efforts to define a particular artistic direction and one sees flourishing of the traditional practices such as Qahvehkhaneh (Coffee house) paintings, calligraphy, miniature painting and classical poetry.

Following the 2003 retrospective of Tanavoli held at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, younger artists start seeking inspiration in the movements and their historical impetus to find a new idiom to define themselves and nation in contemporary world. Artist like GhalamDAR, collapsed Saqqakhaneh and Naqqashi-khatt into his practice of street art. Others like Medhi Ghadyanloo has painted Tehran’s high rises and office buildings with monumental surrealist and hyper-realist murals blurring the lines between architecture, art and the urban environment as well as between reality and fiction.

Aga Khan Museum is uniquely positioned to engage with these contested historical narratives- modernity and tradition, and embedded within those, the tensions between contemporary art and Islamic art and contemporary art and “ethnic art”. In showing Tanavoli’s works Aga Khan Museum signals a commitment to other Canadian artists as well as becoming a site of a new discourse and knowledge.

 

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Author: ismailimail

Independent, civil society media featuring Ismaili Muslim community, inter and intra faith endeavors, achievements and humanitarian works.

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