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ABSTRACT: By tracing the relationship between the work and the world, Iranian exile art reveals alternative perspectives on key historical moments, from the 1953 coup to the current climate crisis. The artists Siah Armajani, Nicky Nodjoumi, Shirin Neshat, Simin Keramati, Arghavan Khosravi, Pouran Jinchi, and Gelare Khoshgozaran emigrated from Iran between 1960 and 2012. Through a range of media—from painting to sculpture, from political posters to film—these artists have developed a distinct visual language to convey their own exilic experience. Mapping this art offers a cartography of exile shaped by the fraught, overlapping histories of Iran and the United States.

The significant changes in the social, economic, and political conditions of Iran in the late Qajar era both precipitated and necessitated changes in cultural production. One way to better understand these shifting paradigms is through an examination of print culture. ᶜAbbas Mirza, the governor of Azerbaijan and a Qajar prince, has been credited with promoting and supporting the printing industry in Iran. In 1812, he oversaw the establishment of a printing house in Tabriz, and it was largely due to his influence that Tabriz became an important center of publishing. Jan Rypka noted that the first "printing business" in Iran was set up in Tabriz in the year 1824-25 but he believed the press to have been operational for only a decade before lithography overtook the printing enterprise. ᶜAbbas Mirza sent a group of students to England to study, the most notable being Mirza Salih Shirazi who was a student at Oxford University.