Biography
Golnar Yarmohammad Touski’s research deals with performative practices in object and non-object based modern and contemporary art in Iran and the region of Middle East. As an artist, she studied painting and sculpture at University of Art in Tehran and received an MA of art history at Ohio University where she wrote her dissertation on contemporary Iranian performance art in diaspora. Her research interests include postcolonial theory, Marxism, modernism studies, diaspora and exile studies, uneven and combined development, performativity, relational aesthetics, mobility, borders, and geopolitics.
Golnar worked as organizer, writer and translator at various art events in Tehran including fourth and fifth editions of Tehran Sculpture Biennial, and was a writer at several art magazines including Tandis [Statue] Biweekly Journal of Art for seven years. During her work as public manager of Hoor art gallery in Tehran, she curated exhibitions on conceptual art and sculpture. Golnar is a practicing performance artist who is mainly interested in art as collaboration.
Selected Conferences and Publications
Review of From Smoke and Tangled Waters We Carried Fire Home, Postcommodity, 2018, Carnegie International, 57th Edition, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh PA, and Frosting Stories, Farhad Moshiri: Go West, Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh PA, 2017-18 in "The Year in Art 2018." Jadaliyya,جدليّة, 2019
“The War of Sovereign Identities: Surveying the International Cultural Landscape for Iranians Today,” Walker Reader, 2018
Co-chair of the Roundtable: Digital Publishing, Dissent and Socially Engaged Art History, organized by editors of Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture issue 6, CAA Annual Conference, Los Angeles, CA, 2018
“Girls Just Wanna Have Fun:” Clandestine Dreams in Gelare Khoshgozaran’s rIAL & tError ; presented at Hysterical Bodies: Disabling Normative Behavior in Contemporary Art, UCSD 8th annual PhD conference, San Diego, CA, March 2015
(Keynote speaker: Amelia Jones)
Selected Art Projects
Immigrant’s Pneumatic Recording Apparatus, ongoing performance piece, 2019
Refrains for Uncertainly Sacred Spaces: a walking performance by Phil Smith, participating performer, Stoke-on Trent, UK, 2014.
Education Details
PhD, University of Pittsburgh, in progress
MA, Art History, Ohio University, 2014
BA, Sculpture, University of Art, Tehran, 2006