Sundaram Tagore Singapore is pleased to present the work of Iranian artist Golnaz Fathi who is renowned for her abstract paintings rooted in the rich traditions of Persian calligraphy. The exhibition comprises recent canvases, works on paper, lightboxes and a new series of expressionist drawings, which are being unveiled for the first time. Born in Tehran in 1972, Fathi is one of the few women in Iran to excel at traditional Islamic calligraphy, a largely male-dominated discipline. For six years, she underwent rigorous training. She would sit for up to eight hours daily, carefully controlling her breathing and writing poetry with a qalam (a writing instrument made from a dried reed) to master traditional strokes. Despite becoming one of the country’s most skilled practitioners, Fathi decided to leave the privileged world of Islamic calligraphy to pursue a career as a contemporary artist. Trading her qalam for paintbrushes and pens, Fathi created her own distinct visual language. For her recent series of paintings on canvas, Fathi applied acrylic in large, gestural brushstrokes using a limited palette of red, blue and yellow. She then used a pen to inscribe the canvases with thousands of minute marks that echo the forms of calligraphic [...]
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