Video: The Happy Accident Behind an Iranian Artist's Pioneering Sculpture
Video: Sculptor Vaziri-Moqaddam: 'Nobody Understood Me' (3 min., 55 sec.)
Asia Society Museum's landmark exhibition Iran Modern, which runs through January 5, 2014, in New York, focuses on Iranian art created during the three decades leading up to the revolution of 1979. Learn more
By almost any definition, Tehran-born artist Mohsen Vaziri-Moqaddam has been a trailblazer in his field. In 1969, years before the term "interactive" entered the art world lexicon, he created a sculpture in Iran that was exactly that: a work that viewers could not only scrutinize up-close but also rearrange and reconfigure according to their own imaginations.
Untitled (Forms in Movement) is now on display as part of Asia Society Museum's Iran Modern exhibition, on view until January 5, 2014. During a trip to New York in early fall, Vaziri-Moqaddam sat down to discuss his work with Michelle Yun, Asia Society Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.
In the video above, the sculptor describes how he serendipitously found the inspiration for his masterpiece. In an earlier video, you can see how Yun and a team of art handlers installed Vaziri-Moqaddam's one-of-a-kind creation.