Talinn Grigor, “The Qajar Age in Contemporary Iranian Art”
Art History Colloquium
November 6, 2020
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
This talk addresses the roles of historicity in contemporary Iranian art practices and aesthetics. By looking into the visual culture of the Qajar and the Pahlavi eras, a narrative of historical truth and myth is formed both by artists working in the context of the Islamic Republic as well as in the diverse Iranian diasporas around the globe. The long and rich political history of Iran returns on the painterly surface to tell equally rich and diverse stories about Iranian identity and artistic norms, and (un)truths.
Talinn Grigor is a professor of art history and chair in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on 19th- to 21st-century art and architectural histories through the framework of postcolonial and critical theories, grounded in Iran and Parsi India. Her books include Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage under the Pahlavi Monarchs (2009); Contemporary Iranian Art: From the Street to the Studio (2014); and The Persian Revival: The Imperialism of the Copy in Iranian and Parsi Architecture (Penn State Univ. Press, 2021). Her articles have appeared in the Art Bulletin, Getty Journal, Third Text, Future Anterior, and Iranian Studies among others. Past grants consist of fellowships at the National Gallery of Art, Getty Research Institute, Social Science Research Council, Cornell University’s Mellon Postdoc, and as Aga Khan student at MIT. She has received awards form Opler, Whiting, Norman, Roshan and Soudavar foundations.
Date posted
Sep 3, 2020
Date updated
Sep 4, 2020