Farhad Moshiri

AnIslamic Contemporary artist

By: Jeffrey Heiman

Background on the Artist Born in Shiraz, Iran, and studied fine arts

at Cal Arts in California. In America he first started experimenting with installations, video art and painting before coming back to Tehran in 1991.

What he is known for: His ironic interpretations of hybrids between traditional

Iranian forms and those of the consumerist and globalized popular culture widespread in his country.

His painted jars, which he is best known for, look like three dimensional objects, bursting with popular foods, drinks and desserts. Elegant popular scripts are written on the body of the large painted jars.

Extra Information Represented by The Third Line, an art gallery in Dubai, UAE

which represents contemporary Middle Eastern artists Significant works include "General Understanding", "A

Dream in Tehran", "Brain", "Silver Portrait on Red" and "Stereo Surround Sofa"

His work is held in the collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

About his work An artist working in Iran today is not free to make direct

political, social, or religious critiques without risking outright censorship. For this reason, Moshiri, like many of his peers, values allusion, ambiguity, and subtlety—an under-the-radar approach. Here he brings the past and the present together in an uneasy union, as if commenting obliquely on the tensions between tradition and modernity in post-revolutionary Iran.

~John Ravenal, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Secret art.

3Y19D; Oil on CanvasIn this piece you can see

his technique used to make the art look weathered.

Farhad Moshiri's Jars series evokes the relationship between tradition and modernity in present-day Iran. In some script –often witty or banal- is emblazoned on the surface. In the present, a rare early example from this series, the jar, appearing ravaged by the passage of time boasts the single word Eshgh ('Love').

Farhad Moshiri - Love

Born Yesterday One of Farhad Moshiri's

most striking cake-icing works to come to public auction, Born Yesterday is the perfect example of Moshiriat his most subversive and satirical. Depicting a frothy cookie-cut-out wedding-cake in its most familiar Hollywood incarnation, Moshiri yet again compares the imported western ideal with local custom.