© The Estate of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian.
One of the most influential Middle Eastern artists of her generation, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (1922–2019) spent six decades articulating her singular vision through mirrored mosaics, reverse-glass painting, and works on paper that recall both Qajar-era Persian interior decoration and the reductive abstraction of the 20th century. Her artistic evolution was shaped at once by cataclysmic geopolitical upheavals, ancient Persian traditions, and the New York art scene of the 1950s. This traveling exhibition presents a survey of Farmanfarmaian’s transboundary art and her significant role within 20th-century global modernism and its continuing reverberations in our time. Tehran/New York brings together nearly one hundred artworks, dating 1970 to 2015, ranging from her Kaleidoscopic mirror mosaics and sculptural assemblages shown beside collages, floral drawings, rugs, calligraphic works and autobiographical works she called “Heartache Boxes”. The exhibition highlights two cities, Tehran and New York, that came to influence and shape Farmanfarmaian’s artistic practice as she frequently moved between the two. Today, she is regarded as one of Iran’s most influential artists.
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Tehran/New York is a traveling exhibition debuting at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, then traveling to Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain and Kunst Museum Den Haag in Hague, Netherlands in 2027.
Learn more at modernamuseet.se.
