Organised by
Iran Heritage Foundation
Date
Saturday 6th May 2015, 6.30am
Location
Description
Vali Mahlouji will talk about the exhibition he has curated for the Whitechapel Gallery entitled A Utopian Stage: Festival of Arts, Shiraz-Persepolis on display from 21 April to 6 October 2015.
The subject is the decade-long controversial Festival of Arts, Shiraz-Persepolis (1967-77) and the project refers to documents and records of the Festival in order to reconstruct the complex networks of ideas that informed its original curatorial direction. In the immediate aftermath of decolonisation, the Festival treated cultural expressions from Asia and Africa as being equal to all others. Its pioneering approach brought together these distant voices with expressions from both sides of the Iron Curtain. The expression of these non-European sensibilities found a natural ally in the internationally fluid and subversive avant-garde, which sought to break from the constraints and stabilities of its own traditions. The Festival proposed a sophisticated version of universalism that rejected any reductive principle of a unified globalised culture.
The subject is the decade-long controversial Festival of Arts, Shiraz-Persepolis (1967-77) and the project refers to documents and records of the Festival in order to reconstruct the complex networks of ideas that informed its original curatorial direction. In the immediate aftermath of decolonisation, the Festival treated cultural expressions from Asia and Africa as being equal to all others. Its pioneering approach brought together these distant voices with expressions from both sides of the Iron Curtain. The expression of these non-European sensibilities found a natural ally in the internationally fluid and subversive avant-garde, which sought to break from the constraints and stabilities of its own traditions. The Festival proposed a sophisticated version of universalism that rejected any reductive principle of a unified globalised culture.
Biographies
Vali Mahlouji is a London-based curator, writer and translator. He is currently an independent curatorial adviser to the British Museum on its contemporary Iranian collections. He has written several publications, including the forthcoming book, Perspectives on the Festival of Arts, Shiraz-Persepolis (2015). He is also the founder of a curatorial and educational platform ‘Archaeology of the Final Decade’ which circulates and puts back in the public domain culturally significant material that has remained obscure or under-exposed. He has curated projects at the Barbican, FOAM Amsterdam Museum of Photography, Musee d’Art Moderne, Paris and MAXXI (as co-curator of Unedited History with Catherine David). His next upcoming exhibition is Kaveh Golestan: Prostitute Series opening at Photo London, Somerset House on 21 May.
