'The Sea Suspended', a book showcasing a collection of artworks by Iranian and Arab contemporary artists featured at an exhibition with the same title at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMOCA), was unveiled Tuesday December 27, at the museum.
Held November 8-December 23, it displayed 40 artworks by Iranian artists and 40 by Arab artists. A pictorial report on the exhibit, the book contains the Arab artworks in its first chapter and Iranian works in the second, Mehr News Agency reported.
The Iranian works were selected from the treasured collection of the TMOCA and the pieces by Arab artists were provided by the Barjeel Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates.
The show represented a 50-year period of works from the 1940s to the 1990s from around the Arab world including Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Saudi Arabia among other countries.
Iranian artists whose works were exhibited included, Farah Ossouli, Gizella Varga-Sinai, Hussein Mahjoubi, Mehrdad Afsari and Mohammad Farnoud, among others.
Notable artists from the Arab world were: Seif Wanly, Inji Efflatoun and Hamed Ewais from Egypt, Kadhim Hayder, Shakir Hassan Al Said and Dia Azzawi from Iraq, Hassan Sharif and Abdel Qader Al Rais from the UAE, Abdallah Benanteur from Algeria and Ahmed Cherkaoui from Morocco.
Themes of the nation and the self, the village and the city, abstraction, language and identity were explored through the works of the Arab artists.
The book also contains remarks by Ali Moradkhani, art deputy at the Culture Ministry; Majid Molla Norouzi, director of TMOCA; Sadeq Kharazi, former diplomat and researcher in art and history; Karim Sultan, curator of Barjeel Art Foundation; and Ehsan Rasoulof, founder of Tehran's Mohsen Gallery and a director of the foundation.
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