Golnaz Fathi — From Our Store

Golnaz Fathi was born in 1972 and lives and works in Tehran. She studied Graphic Design at Azad University in Tehran.

Golnaz Fathi’s work explores the potential for overlap and exchange between the quite separate domains of modernist abstraction and classical Persian calligraphy. She is remarkable for being one of only a handful of women trained to the highest levels of traditional Persian calligraphy. When, her talents once recognised, Fathi was eventually invited to join the inner sanctum of the prestigious Iranian Calligraphy Association—an exclusively masculine institution—she chose instead to follow her dream and define herself as a contemporary artist. Fathi’s rigorous calligraphic training—six hours practice per day over many years—thereafter became a fertile source of her inventive explorations of the art of inscribing meaning by using extemporised forms akin to writing.

Golnaz Fathi’s canvases operate in the ‘interzone’ between script that is absent of meaning and the broad field of potential significance offered to each spectator by that telling absence. The viewer must, therefore, either intuit the artist’s original intentions or allow the visceral shock of each abstract canvas to transform them into a co-creator of the work, and by using their feelings and emotional intelligence discover their own interpretations as they ponder the painting’s meaning.

October Gallery, London exhibited her powerful solo exhibitions, Liminal- Subliminal (2010), Dance Me to the End of Night (2014) and No rain will put out this fire (2023). Fathi’s work has been collected in many public and private collections internationally, including the British Museum, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the World Bank, Washington, D.C.; the Asian Civilizations Museum, Singapore, Carnegie Mellon University in Doha; the Islamic Art Museum (IAMM), Kuala Lumpur; Denver Art Museum, Denver; Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove; and the Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi amongst others.