“This Persian Garden Project will be providing visitors with a private, yet public environment in which to engage important social and cultural issues by gathering and gardening through conversations, screenings, readings, and communal performances. I’m imagining it as a hub for activism and healing—a home for all marginalized, mediated, untold, and less celebrated stories.”
Bahar Behbahani, 2021
The art of Brooklyn-based artist Bahar Behbahani responds to the history and character of the complex landscapes that surround her—reflecting on her cultural origins and immigrant experience. Conversations with the artist across time reveal how she has immersed herself in the form, poetry, and politics of the Persian garden. Now, her vision extends to designing and programming a public environment for activism and healing where she aims to engender a communal sense of hospitality, resistance, and resilience. When Behbahani reaches her goal, a new Persian garden will flourish in Manhattan—cultivated by the hands and minds of artists and historians, thinkers and doers from cultures around the world that call New York City home.
Sound Design: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Bahar Behbahani, Suspended (2007) and All Water Has a Perfect Memory (2019), courtesy the artist
Related Episodes: The Awakening, Bahar Behbahani on Politics and Persian Gardens
Related Links: Bahar Behbahani, Ispahan Flowers Only Once (2019-ongoing), All Water Has a Perfect Memory/Wave Hill Public Garden, 9/11 Memorial
When Artists Who Teach Make Art
Creating Community in Kazakhstan—with CEC ArtsLink
Poetic Interventions Point to Pollution in Kyrgyzstan
Listening to St. Louis—Counterpublic Art Triennial 2023
Searching for Libertalia—with Shiraz Bayjoo
Sharjah Biennial 15—with Hoor Al Qasimi
Global Appalachia—Where Culture and Geography Shape Community
Lure of Local Arts in Appalachia
Curators Declare Independence at IKT Kentucky
The State of Blackness—with Andrea Fatona
Public Water—with Mary Mattingly
I Wish to Say—with Sheryl Oring
Aesthetics of Excess—with Jillian Hernandez
Art in Miami, Then and Now—with FeCuOp
Diaspora Art from the Creole City—with Rosie Gordon-Wallace
Puerto Rico Rising—Resisting Paradise
Puerto Rico Rising—Resilient Artists
Puerto Rico Rising—Radical Leaders
The Awakening
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Spider-Man Crawlspace Podcast
Harlem Is Everywhere
Art2Life
Frankenstein
Anne of Green Gables
The Art Angle
The Week in Art