Behjat Sadr - Time Suspended

 

Film Screening and Discussion

Thursday, September 21st, 2023

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The Institute of Arab and Islamic Art (IAIA) held a screening of Behjat Sadr: Time Suspended, a film by Mitra Farahani, followed by a discussion with Leili Adibfar, a PhD Candidate in Art History, and presented by Zehra Begüm Kışla, the Associate Curator at IAIA.

In conjunction with Sadr's inaugural solo exhibition in New York, this event provided an insight into Sadr's artistic practice and life through the lens of Farahani's film and Adibfar's scholarship, who is currently writing her dissertation on Behjat Sadr. While the film offers a poetic view of Sadr’s world, Adibfar will discuss the artist’s innovative practice in the context of modern Iranian art.  

Bios: 
 

Film Director: Mitra Farahani, born 1975 in Tehran, lives and works in Rome/Paris. After her education in painting and video she has pursued a dual practice, working between both the still image and the moving image. Farahani has directed several films which were selected for the Berlin International Film Festival including award-winning documentary, Fifi Howls From Happiness, 2013, Behjat Sadr: Time Suspended, 2006; Tabous (Zohre & Manouchehr), 2004, and Just a Woman, 2002. Farahani has shown works in various group exhibitions, including Unedited History, Iran 1960–2014, Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, France, and MAXXI Rome, 2014; Peace Treaty, San Sebastian, Spain, 

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Speaker: Leili Adibfar holds a Master’s degree in English from Loyola University Chicago and is a PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her primary research focuses on the art of modern Iran and the role that global art practices and theories, in conversation with local artistic and cultural traditions, played in Late Pahlavi Iran (1941–1979). She is currently in the process of composing her dissertation, a monograph titled Existence, Embodiment, and Oil: The Art of Behjat Sadr in Late Pahlavi Iran.