BEHJAT SADR: DUSTED WATERS Presented here and throughout the gallery, the painter’s quotations BEHJAT SADR (1924-2009) was one of the freest and most DUSTED WATERS PUBLIC PROGRAMME THE MOSAIC ROOMS and poems from her diary attest to her attitudes, moods and intimate independent spirits of the visual arts scene in Iran, and was one of struggles. They underline her friendship with the famous Iranian woman the first women artists and professors to appear on the international Behjat Sadr (1924-2009) was one of Iran’s most important artists. poet and filmmaker Forough Farrokhzad, with whom she spent time biennale scene as early as the 1950s. As a painter, Sadr blended FAMILY FUN BOOK LAUNCH FAMILY FUN TALK FAMILY FUN FAMILY FUN BOOKSHOP VENUE HIRE Under-recognised in her lifetime, this is the first UK solo presentation travelling between Rome and Tehran. Each of them experimented with luxuriant nature and organic forms with the sharp-edged industrial Yalla, Let’s Play Negative of a Group Aleph An Iranian Art Plot: Stories in Cities Festive Singalong A wide range of fiction and Our gallery spaces are available of her work. ‘blackness’ in painting and in poetry, as part of their mutually reflective world, in works that spanned the second half of the twentieth century. Saturday 29 September, 2pm Photograph Saturday 27 October, 2pm ‘Westoxication’ Saturday 24 November, 2pm Saturday 8 December, 2pm non-fiction books, limited for event hire, visit Sadr was a painter and a rebel. She was a pioneer in the male- relationship. Sadr’s artistic friendships continued throughout her life, After completing her studies in Italy, at the Accademia in Rome and in FREE Thursday 11 October, 7pm FREE Thursday 15 November, 7pm FREE FREE edition artwork, gifts and mosaicrooms.org/venue-hire dominated Iranian art world, where she struggled to achieve full with writer Simin Daneshvar, and more recently with filmmaker Mitra Naples (where she collaborated with influential art critics Giulio Carlo FREE FREE DVDs. In-store and online: Take part in an afternoon of Draw and talk together! Inspired by tales from two Sing songs together with recognition. Dusted Waters reveals a visual diary of the artist’s Farahani, whose documentary about the painter (Behjat Sadr: Suspended Argan, Roberto Melli and Emilio Villa) she returned to Tehran. Here mosaicrooms.org/shop STAY IN TOUCH group games, folk songs, Join poet Azita Ghahreman Children and their families will Curator Morad Montazami cities, families will make Palestinian musician and dramatic fusion of work and life. It examines her complex relationship Time, 2006), included in this exhibition, operates as a provocative she became harshly critical of nationalistic art trends and of the Shah’s Sign up to our e-newsletter at dances and stories led by – one of Iran’s leading poets – illustrate their own bilingual looks at the emergence and artworks together by crafting broadcaster Reem Kelani. to the landscape, and to notions of ‘home’ and ‘abroad’, as an artist testament to Sadr as an artist. attempt to establish a soft power out of the arts, finally moving to Paris CAFÉ mosaicrooms.org Palestinian play and drama and her poet translator Maura alphabet in Arabic and English character of Iranian Modernism different stories side by side. Reem will share her knowledge who moved between her country of birth and Europe throughout Sadr is all about frenetic encounters and motions in a cosmos following the 1979 Revolution. In Paris she gained the respect of major Tuesday–Saturday, 11am–6pm specialist Elias Matar. Dooley to read and discuss with Lebanese graphic designer in conversation with art With artist Dia Batal and and love of Arabic music her adult life. of chemical and elemental matter, and political disorder. Dusted critics including Michel Ragon and Pierre Restany. Her work maintained /TheMosaicRooms her new poetry collection. Marwan Kaabour. historians Sussan Babaie and director Elias Matar. including songs with a The exhibition contextualises Sadr’s work within the decentred Waters, a phrase taken from her poems, acts as a metaphor for strong links with ideas of automatism and performance, identifying with VISIT US @TheMosaicRooms Presented with the Poetry David Hodge. festive flavour. modernities that emerged after the end of World War II. Artists of this passionate and anguished relationship with the elements. It the mechanical and electronic devices that she found fascinating. The Mosaic Rooms TheMosaicRooms Translation Centre and her generation navigated the circulation of aesthetic trends between also works as a poetic referral to the natural threats and ecological She exhibited at the Tehran Biennales of 1962 and 1964, the 1962 LATE OPENING 226 Cromwell Road Bloodaxe Books. Western art capitals and Tehran. It sites her work in the context disasters of the twenty-first century, and their relationship to a Venice Biennale and at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in Frieze London FILM MUSIC London SW5 0SW Follow the current exhibition of Iranian modernity, which developed at a time of civil unrest cultural economy: the oil in the slicks that lap the shores of Galicia 1963. The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts held a retrospective Friday 5 October, 6-9pm The Cow FRIDAY LATE Taqasim Music School mosaicrooms.org #BehjatSadr (leading to the 1979 revolution) and was mainly rooted in the boom and Greece, is the same that fuelled the development of modern exhibition in 2004 and her work was presented from a new perspective FREE Saturday 3 November, 7:30pm Cyrus Goberville Maqa¯m Moods +44 (0) 20 7370 9990 of the oil economy and the exploitation of natural resources by visual arts in Iran. for the exhibition Behjat Sadr: Trace Through the Black, Ab-Anbar and SCREENING AND TALK £6.50 Friday 16 November, 7:30pm Thursday 29 November, 7pm Open 11am–6pm If you are visiting Frieze colonial powers. Aria galleries, Tehran, 2016. She died in France in 2009. Behjat Sadr’s Art in the Age of Pipelines FREE FREE Tuesday–Saturday London, come by afterwards for A villager’s beloved cow dies The exhibition is presented in three parts, moving through the works are held in the collections of Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary Thursday 18 October, 7pm Free Entry a chance to visit the exhibition while he is away on a trip to Sound artist Cyrus Goberville, Oud master Ahmed Mukhtar three cities that had a formative influence on her life. These are Rome Art; UNESCO; Grey Art Collection at New York University; Centre FREE during this late opening. the city in this 1969 Iranian grandson of the artist Behjat journeys through the history of in the 1950s, where Sadr completed her training as an artist; Tehran in Pompidou in Paris, and Tate Modern in London. Screening of A Fire, the visually classic film. Presented Sadr, stages a musical maqa¯ms exploring the origins the 1960 and 1970s; and Paris from 1980 onwards, where she moved dramatic documentary of a 70- in collaboration with the performance in response to the of these melodies, how they following the Iranian revolution. day oil fire by director Ebrahim London Iranian Film Festival. exhibition at this special late. can mark times of day and the The systems of symbols and plays on texture in her works are diverse The Mosaic Rooms is proud to present this exhibition, the second in a CURATOR TOUR Golestan, edited by poet emotions they evoke. With and unexpected. What transcends her various periods is Sadr’s repeated three part series curated by Morad Montazami, entitled Cosmic Roads: Dusted Waters Exhibition Forough Farrokhzad. Followed percussionist Walid Kamil. depiction of vertiginous vortexes comprised of twisted lines, powerful Relocating Modernism. The series presents important Modernist artists Tour by panel discussion on the brushstrokes and woven structures. The colour black remains a fixation from three countries: Egypt, Iran and Morocco. Saturday 6 October, 2pm FILM & POETRY TOUR politics and culture of oil in Iran throughout, impenetrable as the night and the thick oil seeping FREE The House is Black Interactions with Morad Montazami, Touraj through the pipelines of Bandar Abbas, Southern Iran, which she visited Credits Thursday 8 November, 7pm Thursday 22 November, 7pm TALK Curator Morad Montazami Atabaki and Ashkan Sepahvand. and photographed in the 1970s. Her dazzling patterns of organic FREE FREE Nawal El Saadawi With thanks to Morad Montazami, curator; Chloe Bonnie More, leads this tour and explores how shapes – playing with earth, wind, fire and water – are like traces of an Thursday 6 December, 7pm assistant curator; and Pooya Abbasian, video production. the works on display illuminate This tribute to poet and Artist and curator Azadeh elemental journey, symbolising a nascent cosmopolitan modernity. FREE the art and personal life of READINGS filmmaker Forough Farrokhzad Fatehrad joins curator Rose A rare selection of major works by the artist are brought together in All works and archives are exhibited courtesy of the artist’s estate and Behjat Sadr. Form and the Female Fiction features a screening of her Lejeune for a conversational Famed author and feminist this exhibition, from her early debate in the 1950s with Art Informel Mitra Goberville-Hananeh, except where specified. Thursday 25 October, 7pm acclaimed filmThe House tour of the exhibition. campaigner Nawal El Saadawi and gestural painting in Italy, to her take on geometric abstraction FREE is Black with readings of her leads a panel discussion on and Islamic architecture upon return to Tehran in the 1960s. It Exhibition series supported by poetry in English and Farsi. feminist movements in the was here that she developed her kinetic works in the form of her Maria Sukkar, Driss and Heli Ben Brahim and a number of generous Celebrated author Sabrina Arab world and Iran from the ‘blind paintings’ – painted surfaces combined with venetian blinds. supporters who wish to remain anonymous. Mahfouz hosts an evening of 1950s onwards. Later in the 1970s she moved to her signature black paintings and theatre readings with women- oil landscapes. Finally, the exhibition presents her collage years Exhibition supported by centred stories from across the (she called them ‘photopaintings’) and her experimentations with Arab world and Iran. photography – a medium Sadr used from the 1950s to frame and archive her own narrative of modernity. Behjat Sadr posing with one of her canvases, 1963-1964 I have introduced the third dimension into my kinetic I am the progeny of my century. I feel this century’s anxiety. works. Instead of the Venetian blind, I could use vertical I have been affected by every place I went to. So my paintings or horizontal lines, but by introducing a third dimension are not ‘local’. They could be entitled: the alluring fragments BEHJAT SADR I brought a convenient additional meaning. I prefer these of nature have not been curbed by the darkness of the time. bright-coloured three-dimensional shutters to an antique I can feel the imprint left by my feet upon the sands of my door I once bought by chance and that I could have used in barren birthplace beyond the high, black wall. The weight of my work to introduce the third dimension. Salvaging the a black stone and its shadow, or a stone inside the door. remains of the dead in order to dance with them, which Behjat Sadr, personal diary, 1990s is such a widespread practice nowadays, is of no interest 9 to me. I like producing new things with today’s materials. 7 Murder of colour Today I am more attracted to optical or engine-induced 12 motion. I need motion to drive my own individual path. Weapon of murder: Spatula If it is meant to be, I will Violence Behjat Sadr, ‘On Kinetic Works’, c. 1967 also paint today. It will Scratchings and shavings I did not profit from international exhibitions 1 be abstract again. It will Backlits organised thanks to oil money. And when a gallery be obscure again […] I They don’t understand the synchronisation owner proposed coinciding my opening with the see a slice of red in black, of emotions and instincts, the sparks and visit of Empress Farah Diba, I was annoyed. Was it a distorted arcade, and the motion sincerity or foolishness? I did not use calligraphy or dried-up trees. The colour DUSTED Behjat Sadr, poems, 1980s Iranian motifs in my canvas to stimulate national green will materialise, but I accept this sin. Yes, I was pride among my compatriots or the curiosity of WATERS once again, the wind and the an abstract painter, but for 14 strangers. This was the cause of my downfall, but 28/09/18 –08/12/18 chill of winter and the storms God’s sake overlook my fault I don’t mind. I did not seek the protection of a man 1. Behjat Sadr in Naples, c. 1957-1958. will take hopes of greenery and accept my repentance. I to advance and achieve success. 3 away. And then only the swear to God, I draw a flower 2. Behjat Sadr and Forough Farrokhzad in the artist’s studio, Tehran, mid-1960s. Behjat Sadr, personal diary, 1990s 3. Behjat Sadr in Piazza San Marco, Venice, 1962. black on black background like a flower, and mix mud 4. Behjat Sadr in her studio, Tehran, 1967. 2 4 will remain. with fertilizer and smother 5. Untitled, 1967. Oil an aluminium foil on Venetian blinds, 170 × 90 cm. Image courtesy the Behjat Sadr estate. Behjat Sadr, your heads with it so that your 6. Behjat Sadr producing a kinetic work in her studio, Tehran, 1967. The blackness of lines lying in water personal diary, 1970s lungs can be filled with it. 7. Untitled, 1974. Oil on paper pasted on hardboard, 92 × 140 cm. Image courtesy the Behjat Sadr estate. Blackness and lines standing in glass Behjat Sadr, 8. Photograph by Behjat Sadr of a street demonstration in the Iranian revolution On glass one instant personal diary, 1970s c. 1979. On glass standing a moment 9. Untitled, 1974. Oil on zinc, 54 × 77 cm. Image courtesy the Behjat Sadr estate. 10. Untitled, c. 1969. Oil on paper an canvas, 67 × 95 cm. Image courtesy Salman On water longer moments Matinfar collection. The changes on glass the changes on water 10 11. Untitled, 1988. Oil on paper and photograph, 70 × 100 cm. Image courtesy Moments and lines in transformation the Behjat Sadr estate. Glass turned to copper 12. Untitled, c. 1975. Oil on canvas, 80 × 128 cm. Image courtesy the Behjat 6 Sadr estate. And water covered in dust 13. Bejhat Sadr in Bandar Abbas, Southern Iran, to visit the oil rigs. Glass and water on the stillness of paper 14. Behjat Sadr (far left) at an exhibition during a visit by Empress Farah Diba, Tehran University of Fine Arts, 1960s. Behjat Sadr poem, edited by Forough Farrokhzad, 1960s Cover 13 Untitled, 1974 (detail). Oil on aluminium, 61 × 102 cm. Image courtesy the 5 8 11 Behjat Sadr estate. FREE