Performing Against the Nation: Iran in Socially Engaged Diasporic Art, 1960s-2010s

This dissertation explores the role of public storytelling performances in shaping social movements in modern Iranian history and the ways in which popular storytelling, Shi’a Islamic visual culture, and ethnic and social liberation movements influenced socially engaged art about Iran in the diaspora. It examines the art of three generations of diasporic artists (1960s to late-2010s), focusing on the legacies of religious and epic storytelling from large-scale paintings (pardeh-dari, naqqali) dating back to the 19th century, when Iran, under the Qajar rulers (1789-1925), saw a rise in popular paintings used for storytelling. These paintings helped storytellers mobilize audiences around epic and religious stories and sometimes challenged systems of social and political oppression. With a focus on the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the dissertation questions common ways of categorizing modern and contemporary Iranian art under the labels of ‘Islamic Revolution’ and ‘Islamic Art,’ instead offering a nuanced account of various social forces of dissent in Iran’s modern and contemporary art history.

Committee: Terrence Smith (Co-chair), Barbara McCloskey (Co-chair), Christopher Nygren, Mrinalini Rajagopalan, Sussan Babaie (The Courtaul Institute of Art, University of London)