Jazeh Tabatabai (1930–2008) was a prominent Iranian writer, poet, playwright, theatre director, gallerist, painter, sculptor and patron of the arts.
Tabatabai describes his art in his own writing as follows: “I do not paint the dreams of ‘One Thousand and One Nights’; I portray the desires and dreams of people. Under the dreamy cover of images of ‘One Thousand and One Nights’, I paint the a thousand and one pains and sorrows of people.”
In his poems, paintings and sculptures, Tabatabai is the lover as well as the beloved, forever left alone in the mythical kingdom he created for himself.
“I have no one,
I am a bird without feathers,
Lonesome and alone.”
Jazeh Tabatabai
In his works, he presents himself as various different creatures: a genderless human, a gazelle, a bird, Lady Sun and in many of his works as “Neither Bird, Nor Human”.
These types of “Neither Bird, Nor Human” creatures are among the oldest images to be found in Persian paintings. In post-Islamic iconography there is a winged horse with feminine features, Buraq, who carried the Prophet Muhammad to the heavens. And on the metal structures and Alam used in mourning ceremonies, there are also many such figurines representing creatures that will be carrying the martyrs to heaven.
The works displayed in this exhibition are from the “Neither Bird, Nor Human” series, which the artist started in the early 1960s and for which he received the grand prize of the imperial court in 1964.