Art Aware is a non-profit-making blog that monitors all that’s interesting in the world of contemporary art, literature and culture in Iran and in the Iranian worldwide diaspora. It is a review and commentary of new exhibitions, events and developments in art media in Iran and in the West. I am a working artist and also an academic art historian. Edited and compiled by Dr Aida Foroutan
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on display in Seattle Iranian artist Forouzan Safari’s work, "Imagined Freedom | Revealing Bodies Never Allowed to Be Seen," at ANTiPODE art gallery in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood. Courtesy the artist. by Ayeda Masood , KUOW Forouzan Safari grew up in Isfahan, Iran, a city known for its historic mosques, bridges, and Persian-Islamic architecture. When she moved to Los Angeles in 2013 to…
Tehran Diaries: Dispatches from Iran Under Siege . By Raha Nik-Andish. New York: OR Books, 2025, 90pp. by Paul Buhle , CounterPunch The text of this small volume dates from April, a “yesterday” that seems eternal, because we understand so little of what is happening in Iran in wartime, and what the Iranians themselves are thinking. The writer, using a pseudonym for obvious reasons, is an art…
Courtesy PRINT Magazine by Steven Heller , PRINT Magazine Behnam Raeesian is an artist and poster designer from northern Iran, in the Sari, Mazandaran Province. He is working with “political urgency, symbolic minimalism and socially engaged visual language” on a project he titles The Fall of the Guardians . Through stark Eurocentric imagery, in a time of war, Raeesian looks at these figures…
A Conversation with Michelle Quay Michelle Quay is a scholar and translator of Persian literature and was the inaugural winner of the Mo Habib Translation Prize for Persian Literature in 2023. She teaches Persian Language and Literature, in addition to Iranian Cinema and Culture, at Brown University and holds a Ph.D. in medieval Persian literature from the University of Cambridge. Her contemporary…
Every year, BJP publishes its Ones to Watch issue – their selection of the artists who epitomise the talent and creativity in international photography today, as nominated by a global network of curators, editors and artists. Here they look at Atefe Moeini , who was nominated as part of the 2025 cohort by the artist and educator Amak Mahmoodian. Image © Atefe Moeini. Courtesy BJP. by Dalia…
Art in exile on show at London’s Iranian Contemporary Art Biennale Iran Herself is a Vineyard by Homa Bazrafshan. Courtesy Mall Galleries and The Conversation by Katayoun Shahandeh , The Conversation With Iran’s official cultural presence on the international stage increasingly uncertain, the 6th Iranian Contemporary Art Biennale in London, With My Roots , carries significance that extends well…
An Interview with Arash Nassiri Arash Nassiri: ‘A Bug’s Life,’ 2026, installation view at Chisenhale Gallery, London, Co-commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London; Fluentum, Berlin; and Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris, produced by Chisenhale Gallery, photo by Andy Keate. Courtesy of the artist and Berlin Art Link by William Kherbek, Berlin Art Link Forms of measurement are essentially arbitrary,…
Ahead of his Venice exhibition at the Canadian Pavilion, the artist, Abbas Akhavan , reflected on diasporic distance and withholding as a form of poetic practice in an interview Cast for a Folly , 2023, installation view, ‘Curtain Call’, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, 2023. Photograph by David Stjernholm. Courtesy the artist, The Third Line, Dubai and Frieze. Interview by Aram Moshayedi ,…
In a wartime childhood shaped by scarcity and ritual, a pair of twins become obsessed with a plant their grandfather cannot grow. Amani Abeid, Untitled , oil on canvas, 200x150cm, 2024. Courtesy Tewas Art Gallery and the Markaz Review. by Erfan Mojib , The Markaz Review Grandpa didn’t think growing tarragon was possible. He grew all sorts of other herbs that filled the plastic container in the…
Navid Azimi Sajadi at Studio la Linea Verticale Navid Azimi Sajadi, “Untitled”, 2025, carpet, hand-woven wool tapestry with cotton base, 89×151 cm (179 with fringes). Courtesy Studio la Linea Verticale and Juliet Art Magazine. by Emanuela Zanon , Juliet Art Magazine Mater Ex Mater – Act I , solo exhibition by Navid Azimi Sajadi (Tehran, 1982) currently on in Bologna at Studio la Linea Verticale,…
