Farhad Moshiri, 1963–2024
By Camilla Alvarez-Chow
Portrait of FARHAD MOSHIRI installing his sculpture Tranquility, 2009. Photo by Claire Dorn. Courtesy The Third Line, Dubai.
*updated on June 23, 2024.
Iranian multimedia artist Farhad Moshiri, who is known for his
witty and satirical pop art, passed away on July 17 at the age of 61. His
passing was announced by his Dubai gallery The Third Line, where he first
showed in 2006.
Moshiri’s practice involved paintings, assemblages, and sculptures created using unabashedly ostentatious or commercial motifs. The artist is best known for using household objects and gaudy materials such as beads, glitter, pearls, crystals, sequins, and gold leaf on canvas. His work explores the juxtaposition of high and low art, incorporating motifs from American consumer culture as well as traditional Iranian craftsmanship to critique Western consumerism in the context of Iran.
In 2008, Moshiri’s embroidery-on-canvas Eshgh (Love) (2007), a large black canvas with generous amounts of glitter spread across it and the Persian word for “love” boldly embroidered with Swarovski crystals at its center, auctioned for more than USD 1 million at Bonhams in Dubai. The sale made Moshiri the first Middle Eastern contemporary artist to achieve this record and brought him international recognition.
Born in the Iranian city of Shiraz, the artist spent his formative years in the United States, where he studied fine art and filmmaking at the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita. After graduation, Moshiri discovered it was difficult to find work as an artist and, therefore, returned to Tehran in 1991.
After initially reselling repaired household items as a means to survive, Moshiri turned to making his own works on canvas. In the early 2000s, he created a series of paintings of Persian jars, items that were once used for storing vinegar or wine, which he recontextualized and adorned with common Iranian phrases and poetic verse in Farsi calligraphy. He created a weathered effect by repeatedly folding them, brushing off the flaked paint, and finally sealing the surface with paint varnish.
Moshiri persisted in discovering new materials and methods of artmaking. Cradle of Happiness and The Vault (both 2005) are a series of exaggeratedly ornate sculptural installations in which the artist covers faux baroque chairs and tables, along with home entertainment systems adorned in a deliberately kitschy, shiny gold finish. Here, the artist comments on the “nouveau-riche giddiness” in contemporary Tehran. “There’s always been an element in my work that’s self-ridiculing,” stated Moshiri in regard to his art practice. “I play with the idea of marketing and commodification, and this feeds my practice.”
In 2017, he debuted his solo museum exhibition, “Farhad Moshiri: Go West,” at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was a midcareer survey that contrasted tradition with the strong appeal of Western popular culture in Iran. More recently, Moshiri participated in a group exhibition titled “Nocturnal Ballads” (2023) at Perrotin gallery in Shanghai.
Moshiri’s artworks are collected by many leading international institutions, including The British Museum, London; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, US; François Pinault Collection, Palazzo Grassi, Venice; Sharjah Art Foundation; and The Farjam Foundation, Dubai.
His wife and collaborator Shirin Aliabadi passed away in 2018.
Camilla Alvarez-Chow is an editorial assistant at ArtAsiaPacific.
