The Unbreakable Rope

Farah Ossouli
b. 1953, Iran
As a child, Farah Ossouli realised her toy dolls
couldn’t act out her make-believe stories as she
wished, so she began to create her own characters
out of paper and card that she then decorated
specifically to manifest her own fairy
tales. This process of crafting her own representations
of her imagination through collage,
pencil and paper spawned her passion for art
– a place where she could express her inner
dreams in the material world. She continued
to make series of new actors with whom she
could play, each time throwing the old ones
away, all the while developing a deep interest
in literature. Fascinated by this mixture of narration
and image, Farah found that painting circumscribed
both loves and offered her a way
to practise both passions simultaneously. Her
work is, as a result, a mix of storytelling made
up of characters in symbolic landscapes, interlinking
with her own understanding and interpretations
of life.
In 1971, Farah went to study for a Diploma
in Painting at the Girl’s School of Fine Arts in
Tehran, before completing a Bachelor of Arts
in Graphic Design at the Faculty of Fine Arts at
the University of Tehran in 1977. Her bold use
of colour and form inflected with symbolism
in her oeuvre reflects her academic roots in
graphics and painting.
Farah’s work can be found in many important
collections, including the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art and the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, both in the USA; the Devi Art
Foundation in India; the Koran Museum in
Iran; the Tropen Museum in the Netherlands;
and the Ludwig Museum in Germany. She is
a member of the Society of Iranian Painters
and the female Iranian artists group, DENA.
Farah was awarded a prize at “Ayeneh dar
Ayeneh” in Tehran in 1997 and won the
2000 Renowned Iranian Women Award, the
2002 Iranian Women Artists Prize and the
2002 Prize at the second Biennial of Islamic
Contemporary Painting in Tehran. She has sat
on several boards and jury panels over the
last two decades, including recently acting
as head of the jury of the Visual Art Festival
at Mellat Gallery in Tehran from 2010–12.
Farah was a member of the jury and selection
committee of the First International Fajr
Festival of Visual Arts at the Tehran Museum
of Contemporary Art, Iran in 2009, a curator
of the Iranian Art Festival Qanat Al Qasba
at Sharjah, UAE in 2008, chairperson of the
exhibition Representation of Persian Painting
in Iran-Imam Ali Arts Museum in 2007 and a
member of the selection committee of the Sixth
Biennial of Persian Painting in 2006. She regularly
exhibits in both group and solo shows
across the globe.
For The unbreakable rope, Farah is exhibiting
two works, both called Untitled, from
her Hafiz series, inspired by poetry of the
Sufi mystic (circa 1325 to 1389) who wrote
paeans to earthly pleasures and disavowed
religious hypocrisy. Depicting a pair of lovers
embracing under a flock of birds, the first
work Untitled comes from a Hafiz poem translating
to ‘The day of travel and night of separation
love ended. I predicted this, the star
passed, and everything came to an end.’ The
second Untitled shows a couple serenading
each other. ‘I am dying with anticipation/
dying from eagerness, but there is no way
out through the curtain. Or if there is a way
out, the guard/keeper of the curtain will not
show it to me.’ Rife with romantic pathos, the
verses evoke love as a force transcending natural
boundaries. Farah employs intricate textures
and patterns highly reminiscent of Islamic
art traditions, through extremely delicate and
controlled brushwork. The figures are tenderly
set in a history of Persian iconography and
heritage, alluding to a magical splendour
begotten by love.
Untitled
Gouache on cardboard
75 x 60 cm
2003-2005
Untitled
Gouache on cardboard
75 x 55 cm
2003-2006