NORMA CLAIRE MORUZZI: Public Art in Private Spaces: Site-Specific Art Installations in Tehran, 1991, 1998, and 2014
UIC Art History Colloquium
November 1, 2019
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Public Art in Private Spaces: Site-Specific Art Installations in Tehran, 1991, 1998, and 2014
In the 1990s, a loose collective of Iranian artists installed their work in empty single family villas that were scheduled to be demolished and replaced by speculative apartment construction. The artists positioned their work within the conceptual framework of public art (projects freely available to a general audience and intended as an intervention into shared social life), but very differently in medium and message from the better known, better documented Iranian examples of state approved public art (outdoor building murals and sculptures). The installations have become almost mythologized: the most significant Iranian challenges to the pristine white cube aesthetics of conventional gallery spaces, while also challenging to the supposed limitations on creative agency in the face of dominant cultural, political, and market forces. Known as the Khaneh Kolangi (the house that is to be knocked down), there is little documentation and even the memories of the participants are contradictory. Based on interviews with artists who were involved, this talk re-examines the Khaneh Kolangi and links their intervention to a new Iranian generation of site-specific, politically inclined Tehran “public” art projects in “private” spaces, disrupting the assumed relationships between authority and freedom in both aesthetic and political terms.
Norma Claire Moruzzi is Associate Professor of Political Science and Gender & Women's Studies, Director of the International Studies Program, and Chair of the Middle East and Muslim Societies Cluster at UIC. A political theorist, she is completing a book manuscript based on ten years of field work in Iran.
Date posted
Oct 1, 2019
Date updated
Oct 25, 2019