Mohammed Afkhami is a passionate art collector and philanthropist whose ethos weaves Iran’s vivid artistic past with its spirited contemporary art scene. His family has profoundly honored and preserved Islamic antiquities, and Afkhami grew up in a scholarly and creative atmosphere. Embarking on his personal collection in 2004, the leading collector has acquired gems reflecting an ever-evolving Iranian identity. He owns about 700 works, 100 of which are non-Iranian. Nearly 140 Iranian artists are represented, including diaspora voices. Afkhami is also a devoted patron of the arts. He founded the Mohammed Afkhami Foundation in order to champion new exhibitions and scholarship, and has developed iii.art as a virtual museum celebrating Iranian art. iii.art won a Red Dot Design Award (described as “the Grammys meets the Oscars” for web design). It received nearly 100,000 visitors in a single day thanks to a post by a prominent Iranian actress.
In addition to his foundation’s growing reach, Afkhami is preparing a major announcement expected later this year—one that promises to elevate the profile of Iranian art on a geopolitical scale. A firm believer in cultural diplomacy, he views art as a universal language. “At the end of the day,” he says, “we’re all human. We all like to be creative. Who doesn’t want a peaceful moment, or a beautiful object?” With a Red Dot Award-winning virtual museum and a Phaidon book on the way, his vision is as clear as ever: Iranian art belongs on the global stage.
In conversation with Whitewall, Afkhami imparted the joys of his personal art collecting journey, the nuanced and vital connections between art and life, as well as his profound meditations on the blossoming chronicle of Iranian contemporary art.
Portrait of Mohammed Afkhami with Shirin Neshat, “Whispers,” 1997, From the Turbulent series; Courtesy of the artist and Mohammed Afkhami.
WHITEWALL: Your family’s rich history in art collecting, particularly your grandfather’s collection of Islamic art and antiquities, played a significant role in your upbringing. How did these early experiences shape your perspective on art and collecting?
MOHAMMED AFKHAMI: I was lucky enough to be in a household where art was prominently displayed everywhere. And it wasn’t just the art, it was also the personalities, because my grandfather and my mother really helped to build that collection. I always was blessed to have art, so to speak, around me, both visibly, but also through a relevant ecosystem around the Islamic art world. My true heart ended up being focused more on the contemporary and modern side.
“I was lucky enough to be in a household where art was prominently displayed everywhere,”
Mohammed Afkhami
Collecting was actually accidental, through a trip I made to Iran in 2004, where I had to stay a few weeks longer than I had initially anticipated. It was on that trip that a friend of mine took me to see the Mah Gallery, which was one of the few contemporary art galleries in Iran in the early 2000s. It was there that I found two works that I loved, both by great modern Iranian artists. One was Sirak Melkonian, the other one was Massoud Arabshahi.
Since 2004, there were literally a handful of contemporary focused art galleries in Tehran. Today, there are over 150. And that’s despite ruinous sanctions, very little to no state support. So just to show you that this scene in Iran, I happen to be lucky that it sort of was reemerging 20 years ago, but it is very well oiled and very well-propelled by a huge collector base in Iran that frankly don’t get out of Iran that often because they don’t have the optionality that, let’s say, some of the diasporic Iranians have.
But it’s a thriving scene, and in fact on Friday afternoons they do these gallery walks where every Friday hundreds, maybe thousands of people get together and do these walks between the galleries and see the new shows. There are so many artists coming through that, if in New York or in London a show might typically have a two or three month run, in Iran it might be one month because there’s so many artists that want to show their works in these galleries. It’s a thriving scene.
WW: And you communicate with the galleries regularly?
MA: Many of them. I have a handful of galleries that I use to source works for me, find artists, and they collaborate with the local ecosystem and act on my behalf.
Step Inside Mohammed Afkhami’s Immersive Art Collection
Farhad Moshiri, “Yek Donya,” 2007, Embroidered Swarovski crystal diamond on canvas and on board; Courtesy of the artist and Mohammed Afkhami.
WW: You have over 600 works by Iranian artists. What criteria guide your acquisitions and how do you balance historical significance with contemporary relevance?
MA: I’ll start by saying that initially I collected works that just aesthetically spoke to me and sometimes didn’t have a meaning. But of course, as any collector will tell you, once they start really going for it there’s almost an insanity that occurs where you buy artwork but you don’t have anywhere to put it. I had to develop a purpose for this collection, and so I said, is there an archive out there of modern and contemporary art from 1950 to present day? The short answer is, of course. There are periods covered by certain collectors and in collections like the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art that have some great artwork from the modern period. But then obviously that really came to a halt around the revolution. So I said, let me build an archive.
I’m pleased to report that today, some of the biggest galleries in the world represent maybe 75 to 80 Middle Eastern artists. And these are big names: Gagosian, Thaddaeus Ropac, Hauser & Wirth. That’s important for me, because one of the main drivers was to make this collection publicly available and seen for the talented artists that are in it, so they can hopefully make careers.
“I’m pleased to report that today, some of the biggest galleries in the world represent maybe 75 to 80 Middle Eastern artists,”
Mohammed Afkhami
WW: Farhad Moshiri’s Yek Donya stands out as a significant piece in your collection. What was it about this work that compelled you to acquire it? And how does it reflect the themes present in your collection?
MA: True story, when I saw the work initially in a Christie’s catalog, and it was coming to the Middle East auction in late 2007, I thought it was kitsch—90,000 Swarovski crystals? I remember there were other collectors who were eyeing it and they would call and say, hey, are you gonna be looking at this work? I said, honestly, I would never buy this work. I hadn’t seen it. I was traveling back from Kuwait and I was with some business clients. I said, listen, why don’t we go to this auction?
There was this work right in the entrance of the auction and it was illuminated. It was shining, it was incredible. And I realized actually I completely misjudged this piece from the catalog and I had to have a go at it. I was standing in the back and there was some furious bidding going on in the front of the room by some very prominent Middle Eastern collectors. It sort of started petering out around $450,000 and I put my hand up. I bought the work at $500,000 before the hammer went down.
It began to focus eyes that normally didn’t even look at this sort of scene. And suddenly galleries, museums, everyone was paying attention to what was going on in this Middle East contemporary scene. And what was unique about that work was that not only was it the price, but the subject matter, which was clearly the artist taking a pun on the fact that Middle Eastern artists always are seeing this sort of ghettoized scene that clearly denotes that the work is from the Middle East. This was a work of crystals on a map, and the map was meant to signify that there were no borders for artists. I love the fact that this Iranian artist who trained at Cal Arts but really was practicing his artwork in Iran came up with this sort of globalist notion by making a simple map. I have a focus in this Iran modern and contemporary section, and I would say that this contemporary artwork remains the crown in the collection.
Impacting the Global Perception of Iranian Art and Culture
Parastou Forouhar, “Friday,” 2003, Quadriptych; Courtesy of the artist and Mohammed Afkhami.
WW: What impact do you believe it has had on the global perception of Iranian culture and art?
MA: We’ve made a lot of effort since 2007 to put together museum shows. Our first show was in Toronto at the Aga Khan Museum, “Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians.” It was fantastic to watch kids and grandparents interacting with the artworks and asking questions and looking at it in curiosity. The show was magical because this museum was built by Fumihiko Maki, who’s the Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect.
WW: You’ve mentioned art’s role in fostering understanding across cultures. How do you see your collection contributing to this dialogue, especially in today’s geopolitical climate?
MA: One of the great honors is that this country perceives this collection as a UAE-based collection. I use my home as a showcase, but the hub of the collection is the UAE. This is a Sunni, Arab country, and they are delighted to play host to this Iranian modern and contemporary collection. That’s the greatest compliment anyone can give, that they regard it as their own, and I regard it as theirs.
In good news, we signed a deal with Phaidon at the end of last year to do a book on a hundred female contemporary Iranian artists. My great grandmother was a very talented artist herself, trained by the great court painter Kamal ol-molk. In the early thirties, she pioneered by creating the first school for female artists exclusively. She was one of the first women to pull the veil off. What people don’t know is that the Iranian art scene is one that has, I would say, an outsized percentage of their artists as female.
The Motivations of a Leading Art Collector
Nicky Nodjoumi, “Yesterday/Today,” 2012, Triptych, Ink on paper; Courtesy of the artist and Mohammed Afkhami.
WW: What motivates this commitment and how do you navigate the challenges involved?
MA: The best thing you can do to support art is simply to buy art from the artist. I try to do it through dealers so that they get used to this idea of working with galleries because I think galleries are a very important function in the development of an artist’s career. It’s another type of philanthropy. If you don’t support these artists, there’ll be no ecosystem. That’s the main motivator. But you have to do it in a sustainable way.
“The best thing you can do to support art is simply to buy art from the artist,”
Mohammed Afkhami
And I mean that by saying you’ve got to be able to buy and pursue and support regularly. So you have to be paced and measured and disciplined in how you support these artists. In addition to my own personal connection to Iran, given my Iranian background, I also think you can see the impact immediately.
Out of COVID, I collaborated with a very talented bunch of guys and we built something called iii.art, and that stands for interactive, immersive, intelligent.art. We wanted to create an experience where you weren’t competing with the physical experience of looking at art, because I think that that will win hands down on 99 occasions out of 100, but if you could complement it and build something that you could not replicate in the real world. This website is available for free. You can browse it at your leisure and it’s a fantastic experience. Only a fraction of the collection is up there because I have to release more.
WW: Developing a virtual museum to showcase your collection, how do you envision it enhancing accessibility to Iranian art globally?
MA: You’ve got to have a vision for it. So my view is when you start putting things into a virtual realm, of course you’re distorting the original artwork in a way, but at the same time you’re giving it a different creative depth and a way to sort of experience it that you could not in the real world.
The Evolving Iranian Contemporary Art Landscape
Portrait of Mohammed Afkhami with YZ kami, “White Dome,” 2013; Courtesy of the artist and Mohammed Afkhami.
WW: From your perspective, how has the Iranian contemporary art scene evolved over the past two decades and what trends or shifts have you observed?
MA: The most interesting thing is it’s been a chronological archive of what’s going on in Iran in many ways. That’s specifically talking about contemporary artists in Iran. What’s great about it is that it’s all done in a very subtle way. I love clever ideas, incorporating something that’s current at that time of making it. So I would say it continues to be a reflection of the mood in society.
What’s fascinating is that this constant link to the past still remains as strong as artists that I started collecting 20 years ago. It’s constantly drawing from the past, because Iran has this incredible richness to its history, whether it’s literature, history, sense of identity.
“It’s constantly drawing from the past, because Iran has this incredible richness to its history,”
Mohammed Afkhami
WW: In what ways do you see technology influencing the future of art collection, creation and exhibition, particularly concerning Middle Eastern art?
MA: I think the art collection in the future is still going to be driven by the principal collector more than anyone else, and the vision of that person or family or whoever’s collecting, and they’ll just use the tools available to them at that time to help maintain it. I respect what’s going on in an AI and the fact that the ability for AI to process information is incomparable to humans. But art is a particularly personal feeling and AI is not conscious so I think it would be hard for AI to disrupt a collector.
Pondering a Long-Lasting Legacy through Art and Philanthropy
Portrait of Mohammed Afkhami with Parviz Tanavoli, “The Last Poet of Iran,” 1962, Oil on Canvas; Courtesy of the artist and Mohammed Afkhami.
WW: Looking ahead, what legacy do you hope to live through your collection and philanthropic efforts in the art world?
MA: My hope has been the same from the beginning. I hope that I’ve been able to shine a positive light on Iranian art. I’d like to expand to other aspects of Iranian culture over time, maybe literature. But my main hope is that people will look at Iran for the positive contributions it’s made to humanity and civilization. And my choice is on the art front. And ultimately, I hope that my collection will remain intact so that my kids and my grandkids can enjoy it and have something to be proud of.
“I hope that I’ve been able to shine a positive light on Iranian art,”
Mohammed Afkhami
And where that ends up, it’s still a work in progress decision. Nothing final at this point, but it’s something that I’m definitely thinking about. And really in close consultation with my family and specifically my mother, who’s really been instrumental in helping me put this collection together.
WW: What guidance would you offer to individuals interested in collecting art from regions that are underrepresented or misunderstood in the global art narrative?
MA: Well, first of all, I would say thank you for your support. And please continue, because we need more individuals like that to recognize the creative talent of these underrepresented or under-covered regions. I think it would be important for them to at least seek good advice so that they have, I would say, the best possible depiction of artwork from those regions that they’re exploring. But most importantly, I would hope that they would continue to pursue artworks that are outside of their comfort zone and support these regions. Because at the end of the day, the vast majority of supporters of art still remain in developed societies and their support will have a huge impact.
