Art at the Border: Sanctions and the Visual Arts of Iran

Abstract

Abstract: This article enumerates the myriad direct and indirect consequences of sanctions on the visual arts. The author draws on ten years of research on the circulation of Iranian art through international exhibitions and the global art market, particularly in the geographies of the United Arab Emirates, Europe and the USA, a time period that encompasses both the Obama-era sanctions on Iran as well as the Trump-era sanctions. Technically, artworks fall under the category of "information and informational materials" and are not under sanction. Yet, given how U.S. sanctions ban any institutions from engaging in financial transactions with Iran, the trade and/or exhibition of art is sanctioned in practice. The idea that art is an exceptional field of life that should be protected evolves quite directly from the philosophy of Emmanuel Kant. In simple terms, his ideas about the role of art in society underpin Western ideals of art and the value system embedded within the sanctions. For Kant, art is as a vehicle for expressing both truth and beauty. Unpolluted by either the political or economic, art should occupy its own autonomous sphere. When "Art" embodies these ideas, it is frequently imagined as a salve, a balm to the ills of society, or a mirror to its problems. The artist is a special genius, both a voice and savior for society. The Iranian artist specifically is then savior of the nation. What happens to these voices and their art when sanctions designed to strangle a nation are deployed? What obstacles do they create for this vehicle of salvation?