Farhad Moshiri

Farhad Moshiri’s work is formally characterized by confectionery colors and its opulent use of glitter, jewels, gold leaf, and pearls; the conceptual undercurrents of his work, however, are more cynical, concerned with social and political criticism. Some of his wall-based works combine the visual effect of tiled mosaics with pixellated digital imagery, a counterpoint that is typical of the artist’s combination of traditional Iranian and contemporary Western iconography. His paintings of traditional ceramic jars overlain with text taken from popular colloquialisms, for instance, recall the “spiritual pop art” of artists who, in the ’60s and ’70s, revisited traditional Arabic calligraphic methods.

Moshiri was born in Shiraz, Iran in 1963. He now lives between Tehran and Paris. Moshiri studied fine arts at CalArts, graduating in 1984, before returning to Iran in 1991 and developing his work there during the artistically open period in the early-2000s, simultaneous to the opening up of the country’s economy under then-President Mohammad Khatami.

Moshiri’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Art Basel Miami Beach and London’s Leighton House Museum, as well as in group exhibitions at Vancouver’s Museum of Anthropology, the Venice Biennale, and New York’s Chelsea Art Museum, among others. His work is included in the collections of the François Pinault Collection, the British Museum, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and Dubai’s Farjam Collection.