Interviewees

Mohammad Ehsai

Mohammad Ehsai is a master calligrapher turned artist who uses dense, interlaced texts to provide a contemplative space for language that does not rely on direct translation. His works are inspired by Western abstraction and Chinese brush painting. Large in scale and often brightly colored upon black backgrounds, his compositions require perceptive silence rather than reading skills, and seek to convey the heavenly power that calligraphy has traditionally possessed. He has exhibited extensively in Tehran and has had work in institutions such as the British Museum, London, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Leighton House Museum, London, and Beirut Exhibition Center, among others.

Maryam Ekhtiar

Curator in the Department of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Maryam Ekhtiar began working at the museum in 2003 as a specialist in the field of nineteenth-century Persian art and culture, calligraphy, and later Persian painting. She was co-editor of the catalog of masterpieces from the museum's collection of Islamic Art and Art of the Islamic World: A Resource for Educators. In addition, she has written articles and lectured extensively in the fields of Iranian art and contemporary art from the Middle East. Her latest book, How to Read the Art of Islamic Calligraphy, was published by The Met in 2018.

Amir Ahmad Falsafi

Amir Ahmad Falsafi is a contemporary calligrapher and a member of the High Council of the Iranian Calligraphers Association, the Calligraphy Policy Council of UNESCO in Iran, and the Specialized Council of the Iranian Calligraphy Museum. Throughout his artistic career, he has revived the extremely fine Nastaliq script, a style that had been forgotten for many years. He has calligraphed and published over 50 books, albums, and treatises. Falsafi holds the First-Class Art Degree (equivalent to a doctorate in art). His works have been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Iran and internationally, including China, India, France, Malaysia, the UAE, the U.S., Switzerland, Turkey, Italy, Azerbaijan, and Canada. He has also served as a judge at many international calligraphy festivals.

Hamid Reza Ghelichkhani

Hamid Reza Ghelichkhani received his calligraphy degree with distinction in 1989. In 1994, he published his calligraphy reference book entitled *A Dictionary of Calligraphy and the Related Arts* and has since published twelve additional books on the subject. He has also served as chair at numerous conferences and seminars. Having studied Persian literature, he has achieved a high level of accuracy in his practical work and creative ideas, which are showcased in his numerous national and international exhibitions. One notable exhibition, titled *Hū*, was held at the Farmanfarma Gallery in Tehran in 2019. Ghelichkhani advocates for the practice of classical poetry, particularly Ferdowsi's *Shahnameh*. His favorite calligraphic form is Siyah Mashq, as he believes it is purely Persian in origin. During the Michaelmas term in 2013, he was a Visiting Fellow at the British Institute of Persian Studies in Cambridge.

Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr.

Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr. is a poet, translator, and corporate consultant who has lived and studied extensively in the Middle East and South Asia. Her translation of poems by Iran's iconic woman poet Forough Farrokhzad (1934-1967), Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season (New Directions) was a finalist for the 2023 PEN Prize for Poetry in Translation. A 30th Anniversary Edition of Eighty Ghazals from the Diwan of Hafiz (d. 1389), Iran's major classical mystical poet, will appear in 2024. Ms Gray's books of poetry include Salient and Series | India, and her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry International, The Harvard Review, and elsewhere. She holds a B.A. and J.D. from Harvard University. She lives in New York City.

Pouya Jahanshahi

Pouya Jahanshahi is an Iranian-born graphic designer and an associate Professor of Graphic Design at Oklahoma State University. He received his MFA in Graphic Design and Integrated Media, from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) where he researched the global development of what he has termed Hybrid Visual Cultures. Focusing on the post-revolutionary and hybrid characteristics of Iranian typography and design, he has been the voice of Iranian graphic design in Western academia. His current research pertains to the evolution of the Nasta'liq script and its identity in the diasporic sphere. His work and research have been presented in venues across the globe.

Elaheh Khatami

As the first female master in Nastaliq script, Elaheh Khatami holds a mastery certificate from the Iranian Calligraphers Association. She has served as a judge in various calligraphy festivals and has held over 10 solo exhibitions both in Iran and internationally. Additionally, she has participated in numerous group exhibitions in countries such as the United States, Canada, the UAE, Kuwait, and Pakistan. Khatami's works are housed in prestigious collections, including the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Art, the Kuwait Museum of Islamic Art, Dr. Elmer's Private Museum in Dubai, and the National Museum of the Quran in Tehran. Among her published works are Ganj-e Noor, Album, A Thousand Passages from Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, Album Hazrat, The Book of Colors and Patterns, This Infinite Explanation, and others.

Glenn D. Lowry

Glenn D. Lowry is an American art historian and director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Lowry began his career as curator of Oriental art at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum in 1981. Lowry was appointed in 1983 as the first director of the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary; he later became curator of Near Eastern Art at the Smithsonian Institution's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art (1984–1990). He was director of the Art Gallery of Ontario from 1990 to 1995. He was appointed director of the Museum of Modern Art in 1995.

Nuria Garcia Masi

Nuria Garcia Masip (born in 1978) is a Spanish calligrapher of Arabic calligraphy. She started to learn Arabic calligraphy when she visited Morocco. In 2000, she learned Arabic calligraphy under the tutelage of calligrapher Mohamed Zakariya. Her interest in calligraphy took her to Istanbul, where she learned the various scripts and styles of Arabic calligraphy from Hasan Çelebi and Davut Bektaş. In 2007, she received Ijazah, a certificate in the Thuluth and Naskh scripts by her three tutors. Nuria holds a master's in art history from the Sorbonne University, and she is currently living in Paris where she teaches, researches, and works on calligraphy.

Bahman Panahi

Bahman Panahi is a visual artist, calligrapher and musician based in Paris. He was drawn to the arts of calligraphy and music from an early age and soon found that his practice of these two art forms complemented each other. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Tehran University; he continued in Ecole Beaux-arts de Valenciennes and his doctoral research (the relationship between music and calligraphy) at the Sorbonne University in France. Bahman Panahi has coined the term "musicalligraphy" to describe his work. A combination of visual abstraction, calligraphy, and music, his pieces are an exploration of the points where these three arts intersect.

Azita Panahpour

Azita Panahpour is an Iranian American multi-disciplinary artist, living in New York. In her series, Shattered Poems, she explores the feelings of displacement, loss, and identity by creating dynamic gestural vocabulary drawn from the Persian alphabet, Emphasis is placed on the alphabet's shapes rather than sound to become a more universal language. Although she is not a traditional calligrapher, she has selected to work with the Nasta'liq style as it is rooted in Iranian culture. Azita's career began as an art director for advertising agencies in New York. She continues to collaborate on creative direction for select clients. Her artwork, including painting, sculpture, and photography, has been exhibited in solo and group shows nationwide. Her work features in both private and corporate collections worldwide.

Simon Rettig

Simon Rettig is the Associate Curator for the Arts of the Islamic World at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art. Between 2012 and 2016, he was the curatorial fellow for the arts of the Islamic World at the Freer and Sackler. Rettig curated the exhibition Nasta'liq: The Genius of Persian Calligraphy (2014), and The Prince and the Shah: Royal Portraits from Qajar Iran (2018). His current projects include the preparation of an exhibition on the Great Mongol Shahnameh (scheduled for 2024) and a monograph on the Freer's celebrated Khusraw and Shirin manuscript.