Firouz FarmanFarmaian On New Line Of Chapans, Art Rugs And Essaouira

Now, FarmanFarmaian is bringing his nomadic spirit to New York City, where he is having a series of performances and exhibitions, including a solo exhibition at Salomon Arts Gallery on December 14 called Nomads of Persia, which runs until January 14, 2025, and a solo exhibition called Paintovers with guest artist Rosti Romanov, which opens on December 10 at the Furman Gallery at the Lincoln Center and runs until December 12.

He is also having a performance with his rock band Forrm at Soho Playhouse on December 9 at 7 p.m., where they will release their Galactica EP.

The exhibitions show the power of textile production when elevated into fine art. He also uses a generative AI experiment combined with video and sound to tie into the tribal heritage of Persian cultures, seen through the eyes of one exile.

After the Islamic revolution in 1979, his family left Tehran for Paris, before relocating to the south of Spain. After his parents divorced, he was sent to a boarding school close to Paris. “I travel extensively, but Paris will always be my ‘heart-town’ and where the headquarters of my cultural production company, We R the Nomads Agency, is based,” he said.

“My father relocated to Marrakech in the 1990s and naturally adopted local Berber tribal culture,” he said. “That connection gradually led to the first collaborations with Amazigh craftswomen, leading me to working with textiles. Eventually, that thread transported me to the Nomadic cultures of Central Asia, and more recently back to the land of my birth where I developed the ‘Khorjin Collection’, my first Persian ArtRugs inspired by the Qashqai tribe.”

He will also be doing a performance at the Museum of Arts and Design on December 12 at 5:30 p.m. to present “Path (Into the Vortex),” which uses generative AI and recorded in real time. “In short, I will jam with the machine,” said the artist.