Maximal Miniatures

Farah (2020), from the series 50 Years Later, Courtesy of Rania Matar

Farah Ossouli. David and I (2), 2014. Gouache on cardboard. 75 x 110 cm

Maximal Miniatures features the work of 13 leading contemporary Iranian artists who reimagine the rich visual tradition of the Persian miniature genre through inventive formal techniques, including experimentations with scale, color, composition, figuration, and abstraction. As an art form, the Persian miniature is grounded in a relationship between text and image in which paintings refer to poetic verses, stories from the Book of Kings (Shahnameh), important battles, heroes, and heroines, using a combination of calligraphic lines, architectural forms, and human figures.

Building upon the miniature’s transnational legacy, the featured artists cross multiple boundaries in their work to focus on questions of identity, gender, ecology, diaspora, and the mythologies that form past and present lives. These new interpretations create images that transcend representation and enter into the realm of the surreal, abstract, and otherworldly. By expanding the miniature form beyond its position as an illustrative work tied to the illumination of manuscripts, these artists point to the aesthetic possibilities of the miniature genre and create new maximal works across painting, sculpture, and works on paper.

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