SHARES

Maximal Miniatures: Contemporary Art from Iran, curated by Donna Honarpisheh, brought together 13 leading Iranian artists to reconsider one of the most refined visual traditions in Islamic art history: the Persian miniature. Presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, the exhibition (January 31 – August 22, 2025) explored how a historically intimate art form can expand into bold, conceptually layered contemporary practice.

Traditionally, Persian miniatures accompanied literary masterpieces such as the Shahnameh, blending poetic narrative with intricate figuration, calligraphy, and architectural detail. These works were never merely decorative; they were intellectual and spiritual spaces where image and text coexisted in delicate harmony.

In Maximal Miniatures, that harmony is disrupted — and reinvented.

Artists like Farah Ossouli stretch the miniature beyond manuscript scale, transforming its jewel-like precision into expansive, emotionally charged compositions. Gouache on cardboard, sculptural interventions, and experimental works on paper demonstrate how the miniature’s discipline can coexist with surrealism, abstraction, and political commentary.

The exhibition highlights how contemporary Iranian artists reclaim this historical genre to address urgent themes:

  • Identity and gender

  • Diaspora and displacement

  • Ecology and fragility

  • Myth as a living language

Rather than illustrating epic battles or royal courts, these artists turn the gaze inward. Figures float in ambiguous landscapes. Architectural frameworks dissolve into dreamlike spaces. Color becomes psychological rather than symbolic. The miniature — once tied to royal patronage and manuscript illumination — becomes a site of resistance and reinvention.

What makes this exhibition particularly powerful is its negotiation between scale and intensity. The term “maximal” does not refer solely to size, but to conceptual density. These works expand the miniature’s visual vocabulary while preserving its intimacy, inviting viewers into layered worlds that reward slow looking.

In a global art landscape often dominated by monumentality, Maximal Miniatures proposes something quieter yet equally radical: that small formats can carry vast histories, and that tradition is not static but continually rewritten.