In his small studio in Brooklyn Heights, New York, Hamid Rahmanian spent 10,000 hours in front of his computer cobbling together a new Shahnameh, the epic mythology of Iran. In the 1,000 years since the Persian poet Ferdowsi put the oral tradition into verse, there have been many versions produced in lithograph, miniature and manuscript form. To create Shahnameh: The Epic of the Persian Kings, Rahmanian meticulously researched and scanned images and texts spanning the 14th through the 19th centuries, from the Indian subcontinent to the Levant and beyond.
Minaret of Ancient Aleppo Mosque Destroyed
The minaret of Aleppo’s ancient Umayyad mosque has been destroyed, Syrian state media and activists say, with the regime and the opposition blaming each other. The mosque, in Aleppo’s UNESCO-listed Old City, has been the centre of fighting for months and had already suffered extensive damage.
Read More: Minaret of Ancient Aleppo Mosque Destroyed
A Remarkable Rediscovery
In 2010, when curators from the Tate Modern in London stepped into the Beirut home of Saloua Raouda Choucair, a Lebanese artist, they were amazed. The house and studio of the woman they would come to call “a pioneer of modernism in the Middle East” was crammed with so many sculptures that some pieces doubled as furniture. Yet hardly any of the hundreds of abstract works, in stone, wood, metal and fiberglass, along with early paintings, had ever been seen in public.
Read More: A Remarkable Rediscovery
See also: A Quest for the Essence
Design Competition: Sustainable Laundry (May 2013)
Deadline for submissions: 31 May 2013
Website: http://www.designwithculture.co.uk/
A competition for creative, enthusiastic designers or design students from around the globe. Showcase your innovations and you could win a Nexus tablet.
See details at the website.
Zahra's Blog + Brown Lady Art Collective 