Eye Magazine

Organised by the Iranian Academy of Art in association with the Saba Artistic and Cultural Center, this new event provided an opportunity to see artists not only from Iran, but also from Syria, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, the Sudan and elsewhere, whose work is rarely shown at poster biennials.

Mohsen Zare, director of Saba, wanted: ‘to create an arena where Muslim designers can communicate with each other and address issues that are important to us.’ Akram Pooraki, director of International Affairs at the Iranian Academy of Arts, added that they also wanted to: ‘identify and recognise Muslim designers around the world and to learn of their situations in their countries and serve as a depository of research on Islamic subjects.’ Topics addressed during the biennial included: ‘The History of Posters in Muslim countries’, ‘Signs and Symbols in Poster Design in Muslim Societies’, and ‘Muslim Graphic Design Education.’

The poster competition was divided into two categories: the Cultural Poster and Posters for Palestine. Said Pooraki: ‘The plight of the Palestinian people is a foremost concern of the Muslim world, so we felt it the most appropriate subject for our first Islamic World Biennial.’

Habibollah Sadeqi, secretary of the biennial, juror, and professor of Art at Shahed University in Tehran, confirmed that only Muslims were invited to participate in the cultural posters section but that ‘because all people care about the Palestinian people, this section is open to all artists, not just Muslims. He who understands this suffering is also my brother.’ One of the winners of the third prize in the Palestine section (sharing the award with Iranian designer Abolfazi Khosravi) was New Orleans designer Rebecca Rapp, whose winning poster was part of the exhibition ‘Don’t Say You Didn’t Know’ [curated by the author of this review], which deals with Palestinian issues. A poster by Palestinian-American artist Samia Halaby (See Eye no. 51 vol. 13) from this same exhibition won a shared second prize with Iranian designer Ahmad Kazemil. Iranians Alireza Fani and Tahamtan Aminian were jointly awarded first prize. This section was the most significant exhibition devoted to the Palestinians since the 1989 exhibition ‘A Homeland Denied’, held in Baghdad. Qobad Shiva and Ahmad Qolizadeh were given the special award of the Biennial for their works displayed in both sections.

For a Western observer, perhaps the most striking element in the cultural posters was the Arabic and Persian typography and calligraphy. Arabic calligraphy has always been the most venerated art form in Islam, since it is seen as the vehicle that spread the word of Mohammed. The holy book of Islam, the Qur’an, played a central role in the development and evolution of Arabic script. Keith Critchlow, an authority on Arabic calligraphy, explains that ‘the calligrapher’s practice was treated as that of a holy person.’

Of the many styles on display, perhaps the most fluid and expressive is the Nastaliq, which was developed in Iran. It was used to write romantic and mystical epics in Persia. Many of the cultural posters about Persia’s greatest poets, Hafez and Rumi, used expressive typography, calligraphy and patterns. Critchlow describes Islamic patterns as ‘combining fundamental principles of geometry with the vegetal forms – “arabesques” or in Persian “islimi” – that represent formative life forces’. Reza Abedini, one of the winners of the first prize in the Cultural section, is known for combining old Persian (Farsi) and motifs with contemporary graphic imagery. Not all the posters employ calligraphy and cannot be classified as distinctly Persian or Arabic.

The other first-prize winner was Iranian designer Mehdi Sa’idi; second prize was shared by Savas Cekic (Turkey) and Reza Alavi (Iran); the third prize was shared by Bijan Seyfuri and Abdul-Nasser Wannus, both from Syria.

The jury included Iranians Morteza Gudarzi, Ahmad Mo’alla, Aidin Aghdashlu and Habibollah Sadeqi, who was also the secretariat of the Biennial. Non-Muslim jurors included Alain Le Quernec (France), Lynwood Kreneck (USA) and Shigeo Fukuda (Japan).

Dana Bartelt, design educator, Prague and New Orleans

First published in Eye no. 55 vol. 14 2005