The Making of a Cosmo-Nationalistic Trajectory: Iranian Cultural Entrepreneurs in Tehran and Dubai

Abstract

The art world is commonly seen as being conducive to the emergence of cosmopolitan spaces and sociabilities. However, this cosmopolitanism cannot be understood without observing the specific characteristics of the field of art and the socio-political context in which it emerges. This article examines how the internationalization and diversification of actors involved in the art scene in Tehran, reconfigures power relations and creates new relationships of interdependence, alignment or domination between actors from diverse social and geographical backgrounds. The focus is on the connections between Dubai and Tehran forged through artistic practices, via the analysis of a key actor: the “cultural entrepreneur”. In this sense, cosmopolitanism is considered both through the individual trajectory of the cultural entrepreneur, strongly anchored in the Iranian national context, and as a characteristic of urban spaces and sociabilities generated by artistic dynamics.

Keywords:

• cosmopolitanism
• Dubai
• Iran
• Tehran
• cultural entrepreneur
• art world

Notes

1 Kaufmann et al., Circulations in the Global History of Art (2015).

2 Heinich, “L’art à l’épreuve de ses médiations”, Médium 19.2 (2009), pp. 21–35

3 Journées d’études Mobilités humaines et Création, Institut Français de recherche en Iran (IFRI), Esfahan/Tehran, 12–14 November 2017, https://ifriran.org/mobilites/index.php.

4 DiMaggio, “Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth-Century Boston: The Creation of an Organizational Base for High Culture in America”, Media, Culture & Society 4.1 (January 1982), pp. 33–50. DiMaggio, “Classification in Art”, American Sociological Review 52.4 (1987), pp. 440–455.

5 Swedberg, “The Cultural Entrepreneur and the Creative Industries: Beginning in Vienna”, Journal of Cultural Economics 30.4 (2006), p. 260.

6 Codell, The Victorian Artist: Artists’ Lifewritings in Britain, ca. 1870–1910 (2003); Codell, Political Economy of Art: Making the Nation of Culture (2008); Velthuis, Olav, and Curioni, “Making Markets Global”, in Velthuis and Curioni (eds), Cosmopolitan Canvases (2015), pp. 1–28.

7 Harvey, Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography (2001), p. 345

8 Heinich, “L’art à l’épreuve de ses médiations”.

9 Calhoun, “Cosmopolitanism in the Modern Social Imaginary”, Daedalus 137.3 (July 2008), pp. 105–114; Cousin and Chauvin, “Globalizing Forms of Elite Sociability: Varieties of Cosmopolitanism in Paris Social Clubs”, Ethnic and Racial Studies 37.12 (October 2014), pp. 2209–2225.

10 Schiller, Darieva, and Gruner-Domic, “Defining Cosmopolitan Sociability in a Transnational Age: An Introduction”, Ethnic and Racial Studies 34.3 (March 2011), pp. 399–418.

11 Calhoun, “Cosmopolitanism in the Modern Social Imaginary”, p. 113.

12 Grigor, Contemporary Iranian Art: From the Street to the Studio (2014).

13 See: Diba, Bāghī miyān-i dū khiyābān: chahār hazār va yak rūz az zindagī-i Kāmrān Dībā / dar guft va gū bā Riz̤ā Dānishvar (2010).

14 Bombardier, Les pionniers de la Nouvelle peinture en Iran: oeuvres méconnues, activités novatrices et scandales au tournant des années 1940 (2017).

15 Bayart, “Le concept de situation thermidorienne: régimes néo-révolutionnaires et libéralisation économique”, Questions de Recherche 24 (March 2008), p. 9, quotation translated from the original French.

16 Harris, A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran (2017).

17 Vahabi and Coville, “L’économie politique de la république islamique d’Iran”, Revue internationale des études du développement 229.1 (2017), pp. 11–31.

18 Harris, A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran (2017).

19 Moghadam, “‘L’art est mon métier’: émergence et professionnalisation du marché de l’art à Dubaï”, Transcontinentales 12–13 (2012).

20 Nasr, The Rise of Islamic Capitalism: Why the New Muslim Middle Class Is the Key to Defeating Extremism (2010); Moghadam and Weber, “Circulating by Default: Yerevan and Erbil, the Backyards of Iranian Mobility”, in Vignal (eds), The Transnational Middle East: People, Places, Borders (2017), pp. 164–180.

21 Hadi Razavi, son-in-law of the Minister of Labor in Hassan Rohani’s government, and Mohammad Emami are investors in the famous television series Shahrzad. They were recently accused of corruption for borrowing from the teachers’ pension fund without guarantee in order to finance the production of this television series. See www.bbc.com/persian/iran-49248244

22 Interview with an Iranian cultural entrepreneur (1), Dubai, March 2017.

23 Students in the arts represent 2% of the total number of students in 1987 and more than 8% in 2017 whereas the number of students in the medical sciences decreased within the same period from 26% to 6% [Statistical Center for Iran, “Higher Education: Statistical Tables”].

24 Salehi-Isfahani, “Poverty and Income Inequality in the Islamic Republic of Iran”, Revue internationale des études du développement 229.1 (2017), p. 113–136.

25 Khatam, Tehran Urban Reforms between Two Revolutions, Developmentalism, Worlding Urbanism and Neoliberalism, PhD diss. (2015); Keshavarzian, “Decentralization and Ambiguities of Local Politics in Tehran”, Middle East Institute, Governing Megacities in MENA and Asia (2016)

26 Municipality of Tehran, “Ṭarḥeh moṭāle ʿe va barresī masʾ leh tose ʿe shahrī manṭaqeh shesh Tehran”, vol. 11, Shahr dāri tehran, mohandesīn moshāver naqshe jahān (1382) [2003].

27 Marefat, Building to Power: Architecture of Tehran 1921–1941, PhD diss. (1988).

28 Schein, “Of Cargo and Satellites: Imagined Cosmopolitanism”, Postcolonial Studies 2.3 (November 1999), pp. 345–375.

29 Interview with an Iranian cultural entrepreneur (1), Tehran, May 2017.

30 The first month of the Islamic calendar during which a set of rituals take place associated with mainly Shia Muslims.

31 Interview with an Iranian cultural entrepreneur (2), Tehran, May 2017.

32 Cousin and Chauvin, “Globalizing Forms of Elite Sociability: Varieties of Cosmopolitanism in Paris Social Clubs”.

33 Moghadam, “L’art est mon métier’: émergence et professionnalisation du marché de l’art à Dubaï”; Brones and Moghadam, “Beirut-Dubai. Translocal Dynamics and the Shaping of Urban Art Districts”, in Vignal (ed.), The Transnational Middle East: People, Places, Borders (2017), pp. 238–254.

34 Iran’s economic crisis, which started in January 2018 after the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal, geopolitical tensions between Iran and the UAE and the Covid context seem to have decreased the number of Iranian galleries in Art Dubai editions of 2019 and 2021 (Art Dubai 2020 edition was cancelled due to the Covid circumstances).

35 Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (1996).

36 Wagner, Les Nouvelles Élites de La Mondialisation: Une Immigration Dorée En France (1998).

37 Interview with one of the organizers of Art Dubai, March 2017.

38 Mohsen Gallery, Spheres of Influence exhibition catalogue (2016).

39 Interview with the manager of an international art residency in Tehran, November 2017, Tehran

40 Wagner, “L’émergence d’une classe dominante mondialisée ?”, Regards croisés sur l’economie 21.2 (2017), p. 95, quotation translated from the original French.

41 Beck, “Cosmopolitical Realism: On the Distinction between Cosmopolitanism in Philosophy and the Social Sciences”, Global Networks 4.2 (April 2004), p. 134

42 Weber, The Rational and Social Foundations of Music (1958).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amin Moghadam

Amin Moghadam is a Senior Research Associate at the CERC in Migration and Integration, Toronto Metropolitan University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5B 2K3, Canada, [email protected], [email protected].