A group art show, titled ‘Giving Yesterday a Tomorrow’ by Iranian artists is underway at Stuttgart Gallery in Stuttgart, the capital of southwest Germany’s Baden-Wurttemberg state.
The show includes photos and videos by Mehraneh Atashi and Dadbeh Bassir, and collages and installation by Mona Hakimi, which explores traditional technologies, old legends and Persian poetry, looking at their significance in today’s social and political context and reflecting the transformation of traditional norms in a rapidly changing world, the Persian art magazine ‘Tandis’ reports.
“We looked at different moments and monuments during the modernization process in Iran in the last century, when the process of the recreation and reinterpretation of historical heritage was initiated,” said Bassir, who is also the curator of the show.
Through different media, “we tried to combine past and present, tradition and modernity, which are binary categories and always questioned in Iranian architecture and art.”
In an introduction to the exhibition, the artists said: “How does a society deal with its cultural heritage? How can approaches to identity, culture, tradition and history become a resource? How can we give yesterday a tomorrow, as Le Corbusier put it during a journey in 1929? In Iran, a country that can look back at several millennia of culture, and whose cultural identity has experienced diverse influences over the centuries, questions like these are being asked – by architects, artists, authors and scientists.”
Bassir, 38, studied at Azad University of Art and Architecture in Tehran, in the field of photography. In 2009, his work was exhibited along many other famous photographers in an exhibition celebrating 165 Years of Photography in Iran, at Musée du Quai Branly – Paris, France.
Since 2007, he is a member of the Institute for Promotion of Visual Arts in Iran.
The show will receive visitors until July 23.
