PublicationNotes #12

The past two decades have witnessed a proliferation of independent art institutions and pedagogical platforms in Iran, which have come to play a crucial role in the production of knowledge and generation of artistic practices. Political upheavals, obstructive interference with university curricula, and retrogressive agendas in the education system have increased the number of lecturers leaving or forced out of academia and taking refuge in informal education. Simultaneously, this situation has involved a decentralization of education, with power flowing away from state bodies and toward independent initiatives. “Alternative or Outside? The Urgency of Independent Art Education in Iran” is a series of interviews conducted with practitioners in art education who have been contributing to the formation and continuation of this independent field as a form of resistance. It examines the factors and motives for such an educational turn, from institutional crisis to institutional liberation, while addressing some of the problems within the field.

First, allow me to provide some context for the present situation. Following a few years of university closure caused by the Cultural Revolution of 1979 for the purpose of Islamization, art education found its way back into the universities, but was limited to certain subjects, starting in 1983. Then, from the late 1990s, the number of independent educational platforms started to grow year by year and the topics of study multiplied. Hundreds of private institutions set up art courses, from drawing, printmaking, painting, and sculpture to video art, installation, and multimedia. Yet, apart from a small number of institutions and artistic and curatorial projects, a huge gap remains regarding art theory, art philosophy, art criticism, critical art studies, and the potential of the curatorial.

To help build an understanding of the crucial role alternative art education has come to play in Iran, the interviews in this series explore the following questions, among others. Does alternative education carry any “institutional critique” derived from its conceptual arguments within the Iranian context? Could we say that alternative art education in Iran stands in opposition to the established educational system, or does the former ultimately align with the latter? As the knowledge and research expand within these pedagogical platforms, has a coherent and interconnected field of knowledge developed, or are we faced with fragmented islands of isolated bodies? What do we learn from the multiplicity of methodological structures that these alternative education institutions put forth? What role do artists and curators play in such a mode of education when attempting to approach emancipatory knowledge?

In the first interview, Saeed Ravanbakhsh, founder and director of Charsoo Honar art institute (est.1996) in Tehran, describes some of the challenges prevailing in the academic environment in art and humanities after 1983. Operating as part of a new program with few resources, many of the academics then, who were mostly educated artists from French or other European schools, had to generate novel methods of teaching. As a former art student and later a university lecturer himself, Ravanbakhsh explains that it became the responsibility of students and teachers to find methodologies that could tackle the oppressiveness of the redefined modules.

Still, the influence of Western hegemony on course content and training methods remained a crucial issue. This condition led to a proliferation of artist-run courses, wherein creative and experimental art education were instrumental yet restricted to the teachers’ perspectives. From a critical point of view, Behrang Samadzadegan, an independent artist, educator, and curator, discusses the complications of the old-school and hierarchical master-student relationship. He believes that we need to produce, taking up a skeptical and nonlinear attitude, different sets of knowledges that connect history to contemporary art.

In the search for different modalities of knowledge production, instrumental roles have been played by the discursive forms that artistic practices take up, the increasingly popular pedagogical format of events, and the educational turn in curatorial practice. Artistic practices have a strong tendency to merge “research methods and scientific knowledge” in the creative process.¹ Furthermore, contemporary art exhibitions, especially in the contexts of museums, biennials, and art fairs, have benefited from discursive events such as panel discussions, talks, symposia, and education programs.² If we consider the curatorial as a cultural practice that goes beyond exhibition-making, then we must recognize that it employs methods of generating, mediating, and reflecting experience and knowledge.³

Elham Puriya Mehr, an independent curator and cofounder of Empty Space Studio in Tehran and Vancouver, Canada (est. 2018), in her interview stresses the significance of independent art education in Iran and the production of knowledge not as external to the exhibition but as the main event itself. She argues that “the meaning of ‘alternative’ itself is a foundation of contemporary art,” one that goes beyond the gallery format and exhibition spaces. Puriya Mehr suggests the social aspect of curatorial and some contemporary art practices is also a significant site of knowledge production.

From yet another perspective, Aria Eghbal, founder and director of Aria Art Gallery & Classes in Tehran (est. 2002), addresses the problem of similarity in students’ works as a repercussion of the restricted art education curriculum. At stake is students turning into indistinguishable copies of their teachers and lacking creative thinking in their work. Eghbal argues that informal education should combine art and theory with everyday life and promote a more creative form of education.

Mehdi Ansari, founder and director of Shamseh Academy in Tehran (est. 2008), takes the matter further, suggesting the greatest urgency facing independent educational platforms is to sustain critical thinking by becoming critical bodies. He suggests that it is the responsibility of alternative institutions to theorize those acts of rebellion and resistance that we witness in our society today to the extent by knowing them as art performances or art activism. The artist’s role is to represent or materialize the events and situations that they encounter within society and in everyday life while it is down to art criticism to concretize that. Informal education must maintain a critical and multidimensional approach through a slow and steady process in order to produce dialogues that circulate various signifiers in society. In other words, moving beyond the limits of academia requires placing art in social, political, and everyday contexts, thus maintaining art as an emancipatory practice.

Whether we call them “alternatives to academia” or describe them as “independent of the established educational system,” such self-organized modes of education, through attempting emancipatory practices of knowledge production, are playing a crucial role in grasping contemporary conditions and their processes. Given the large volume of research and educational work available on the topic, this interview series looks at but a fragment of the discussion. Yet we hope these interviews gesture toward the potentials of independent education and the urgency of discussing its challenges on a larger scale.