Golnaz Fathi

Golnaz Fathi was born in 1972 and lives and works in Tehran. She creates astonishing compositions and installations using various media: acrylic on canvas, pen on paper, light boxes, silk and wool. She finds inspiration in poetry and present day Iran. Taking her mastery of traditional calligraphy as the departure point for her work, she transforms it into the realm of the contemporary and the personal, releasing ‘that within myself which cannot be put into words.’

She studied Graphic Design at Azad Art University (Tehran) and was one of the very few women in Iran to spend six intensive years mastering classical calligraphy at the Iranian Society of Calligraphy (Tehran). Calligraphy plays a critical role in Islamic culture and religion, as only perfect brushstrokes are worthy to carry meanings of the Divine. Although Golnaz excelled in her work, she felt constrained by the rules. Instead of focusing on words, she followed her heart’s desire into pictorial expression.

Rhythmic gestures and form fascinate her. Calligraphy’s forms still serve as a basis for her work, but it contains no written text. Some of her work arises from traditional calligraphic warming-up exercises, those which best suit the spontaneity and urgency of her work. She works mainly in black, white and red, but includes daring and vivid use of colour on occasion.
Golnaz surprises the viewer by her lightning strokes of savage irony. She allows her worldwide audience to perceive her art with the interpretative freedom in which she creates.

Her work arouses profound curiosity, then absorbs it until exploration deepens into understanding that a new force, a revelatory point of view has arrived in artistic history. October Gallery exhibited her powerful solo exhibition, Liminal- Subliminal in 2010.