Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art Names New Director
Tehran deputy tradition minister for creative affairs Mahmud Salari on March 20 announced Ebadorreza Eslami-Kulai as the future director of the Tehran Museum of Modern Art. Eslami-Kulai replaces Ehsan Aqai, who was dismissed last 7 days in the wake of an incident in which an aerial performer was dragged facefirst by means of a 1,200-gallon vat of waste oil comprising the 1977 operate Matter and Intellect by vaunted Mono-ha artist Noriyuki Haraguchi. While each acrobat and artwork endured slight hurt, and although the museum has available no remark on the March 14 firing of Aqai, it is greatly thought that his unceremonious departure is intently connected to the oleaginous incident.
(Fortunately) shirtless and clad in a harness, Yaser Khaseb was suspended right before onlookers above the shallow, inky black pool in the institution’s soaring stone atrium for the efficiency Cat of the Silk Road, as section of the opening festivities celebrating the exhibition “Panj Ganj,” themed close to the do the job of twelfth-century Iranian poet Nizami Ganjavi. A colleague charged with guiding the acrobat’s peregrinations seemingly made an regrettable misjudgment as Khaseb hovered upside down, just inches from the shiny onyx floor, and, for every a video clip posted Khaseb’s Instagram, swung him splashing into the liquid, splattering the floor all-around the pool and leaving Khaseb kneeling and gasping at its edge. A smattering of uncertain applause from the assembled website visitors greeted the spectacle.
The work by Haraguchi, who died in 2020, is the only extant a single of its sort above the course of his occupation, the Japanese artist produced about twenty of the swimming pools at numerous locations all around the globe. Resembling a polished sheet of stone when undisturbed, the 7-inch-deep, Issue and Head has been twice restored, in 1996 and in 2017, the contents of the rectangular fourteen-by-20-one particular-foot trough both absolutely partly replenished.
Khaseb, for his portion, was regretful but also philosophical about his dunking. “A function of artwork can be reborn in get hold of with other operates,” he famous. “From the conversation concerning two functions, a new operate can be created.” And, in this instance, a new director.