Dashti, Gohar

Gohar Dashti explores fraught social and political issues through carefully staged photographs in her series Iran, Untitled. By tightly clustering groups of people such as travelers or soldiers in the middle of a desert landscape, Dashti creates mysterious tableaus that suggest the isolation of specific populations within Iranian society. At the same time, she underscores the insularity of her select groups by providing one element that compositionally binds the people together, such as a bathtub, a rug, or orange traffic cones. Dashti describes these images as haikus exploring the relationship between form and content. “It’s like objectifying a feeling; that is how an image reveals itself,” she explains. Ultimately, her work suggests the universal human need to bond with others, as well as the common urge to seek distance from the unfamiliar.

Gohar Dashti completed her MA in Photography from the University of Tehran in 2005. Working between staged photography and video, Dashti has participated in several artist residencies and has received scholarships such as the DAAD award, 2009–2011; Visiting Arts (1mile2 project) in Bradford, UK, 2009; and International Arts & Artists (Art Bridge) in Washington, DC, 2008. The artist has participated in several solo exhibitions including at the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (2021); the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ (2020); Officine dell'Immagine, Milan, Italy (2018); Mohsen Gallery, Tehran, Iran (2017); and the Australian Centre for Photography, Darlinghurst, Sydney (2015); among others. In addition to the Museum of Contemporary Photography, her works are held in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; the Smithsonian Museum, Washington D.C.; and Kadist Art Foundation, Paris. Dashti served as a visiting professor at Berlin University of the Arts from 2023 to 2024.