Iranian Art at Cosmoscow: A Multigenerational Narrative in the “Persian” Section

The 14th edition of Cosmoscow Art Fair was held from September 4 to 6, 2026, at the Timiryazev Center in Moscow, with the participation of 108 galleries. This year, 20 galleries participated in the fair for the first time, while 15 galleries from outside Russia also took part in Cosmoscow.

In recent years, the “Art Week” has become an important format for organizing art events in cities around the world. These events are typically not limited to a single exhibition or venue. Instead, they bring together museums, galleries, art spaces, cultural institutions, and a range of programs for a specific period as part of a shared or coordinated program.

Efforts to develop the Iranian visual arts market have taken various forms over the past two decades, ranging from events supported by institutional and governmental structures to collaborations among private galleries and, in recent years, projects aimed at expanding artistic activities across the city. Tehran Art Expo, Haft Negah, TIR Art, and Tehran Art Fair have each contributed to this trajectory, while differing in their structures, modes of organization, and degrees of continuity.

The exhibition **“Solb”** will open at **Artibition Gallery** on Friday, **30 Mordad**, in conjunction with the **“Art Month”** event. The artists participating in the exhibition, listed in alphabetical order, are: **Saber Abbar, Mojtaba Amini, Omid Omidvari, Majid Biglari, Vahid Dashtiyari, Reza Rasouli, Tahmineh Sharafat, Behrang Samadzadegan, Shadi Ghadirian, Marjan Ghorbani, Zahra Ghiasi, Shoayb Gorgani, Amir Mabed, Omid Mahdizadeh, and Anita Hashemi-Moghaddam.**

From the 1980s onward, certain exhibitions began to move beyond the conventional model of displaying and viewing artworks, transforming the exhibition itself into an opportunity for reflection, experience, and engagement with complex issues. In these projects, philosophy, architecture, technology, science, and politics play an active role in shaping both the space and the viewer’s experience. Despite their historical and theoretical differences, the following four examples demonstrate how an exhibition can transcend its role as a “site for displaying artworks” and become a space for experiencing an idea.

Adapted from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's essay Women Artists in Nineteenth-Century France, this text reflects on a timeless truth: throughout history, women's presence has been defined by perseverance and struggle. Every step forward was taken with the weight of limitation and judgment fastened to their feet. And yet, from those burdens emerged some of the most enduring masterpieces in the history of art.

Throughout the history of art, portraiture has been one of the most familiar and enduring genres of painting, offering a visual record of social relationships, class distinctions, cultural preferences, and even the structures of power that shaped different periods. Despite its significance within art history, however, portraiture has rarely been the subject of quantitative, data-driven research. This article draws upon the findings of the study The Changing Faces of the Paris Salon: Portraiture, 1740–1881, published in Poetics in 2022 by Diana Seave Greenwald and Kim Oosterlinck. Using an extensive dataset, the authors examined the role of portraiture in the Paris Salon, providing new insights into the genre's significance, its transformation over time, and the shifting social and demographic characteristics of the individuals depicted in portraits.

The group exhibition Face to Face will open on July 17 at Artibition Gallery, presenting works centered on portraiture.

Undoubtedly, portraiture is one of the most significant genres throughout the history of art, maintaining a continuous presence from the earliest civilizations to the age of artificial intelligence. In the past, portraiture served as a means of recording the presence and status of important individuals; however, in contemporary art, this genre has evolved into a medium for addressing fundamentally different questions. The broad potential of portraiture has led some of the world’s most prestigious museums, including the National Portrait Gallery (London) and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.), to present portraiture as a powerful tool for exploring history, society, and culture.

From mid-June to early July, the Arthal building hosted three art events across two independent spaces of the Artibition Gallery. The exhibitions “Modern Collector” and “Selection”, each with a different approach, were presented in Gallery No. 1 and Gallery No. 2 at Artibition. Alongside these exhibitions, posters from the 10th edition of the Shiraz Arts Festival were displayed in a space on the basement level of the Arthal building. Additionally, books published by Honar Hall Publishing and Nazar Publishing were also presented.

In one chapter of Lives of the Artists, Calvin Tomkins explores the life and artistic practice of Richard Serra. He recounts Serra's formative years, his early encounters with modern art, and his rise to become one of the most influential contemporary sculptors in the United States.

This article begins with an encounter between two identically titled works: two Rabbits whose only shared feature is their name, yet whose visual presentation generates entirely different experiences for the viewer, situated at opposite poles. Jeff Koons’s Rabbit, with its polished and reflective surface, is firmly embedded within the visual and market-oriented logic of contemporary art. In contrast, Nikzad Nojoumi’s Rabbit, with its anthropomorphic and restrained body, confronts the viewer with an experience of suspension and violence. This opposition gives rise to the central question of the article: how does a single visual sign, operating within two distinct artistic fields, produce different systems of meaning, value, and artistic legitimacy? To address this question, the article examines the two works titled Rabbit by Jeff Koons and Nikzad Nojoumi.