Shaping their own Contemporary Art ‎World: Iranian Ceramic Artists and the ‎Biennials of Contemporary Ceramics ‎1988-2020‎

For over thirty years, from 1988 to 2020, the Iranian National Biennials of Contemporary ‎Ceramics were the country’s most important showcase for ceramic art. The body of work ‎which emerged from Iranian national ceramics biennials offers a fascinating record of ‎artistic response to a unique set of political, cultural, and social influences, in which ‎opportunities for ceramic art expanded in alignment with international trends and even ‎foreshadowed the rejection of the art/craft divide happening elsewhere at the time. ‎Participation in the biennials would eventually grow to include more than five hundred ‎people and provide the impetus for the establishment of an independent professional ‎association for ceramic artists. Although they have largely been overlooked in the ‎institutional collections and academic histories of Islamic art, contemporary Iranian art, ‎and studio ceramics, they gave Iranian ceramicists a platform on which to help renegotiate ‎their identity as artists and the position of ceramics in Iranian life. This thesis details ‎events leading to the establishment of the biennials, their integration into the field of ‎contemporary art after the 1979 Iranian revolution, characteristics which emerged to ‎distinguish contemporary pottery from other types of ceramics, and the evolving ‎relationship between utilitarian form and abstract sculpture. It also covers the ‎professionalisation of the field and the influence of the biennial exhibitions on ‎contemporary studio ceramics practice. The ceramics biennials are significant events in ‎contemporary craft culture which have implications for building a more inclusive narrative ‎of global art history. It builds an interdisciplinary social and artistic history, drawing from ‎contemporary art, Islamic art, and studio ceramics, to establish a new and cohesive ‎narrative for an underrepresented aspect of global art history. ‎