Photos of Shahla Khadijeh Jahed’s court proceedings by Farzin Golpad Recently I saw the first scenes of Shahla Khadijeh Jahed’s court defense. Shahla was accused of the first degree murder of Laleh Saharkhizan, wife of famed Iranian footballer Naser Mohammadkhani. This soap operatic affair, which has captured the attention of millions, began more than three […]

Images of Feral Trade Coffee from El Salvador and Iranian electric rice cooker from Pars Khazar factory. “It all started because I wanted some decent coffee for my bar,” explains Kate Rich, the British-based artist-cum-import-export entrepreneur. “Everyone said I should get Fair Trade, but the packaging was patronizing, full of these sentimental images and information […]

Photos by Paolo Woods Ducking the election flyers thrust through my car window one evening, I found myself face to face with a shapely midriff. A teenage boy’s abdomen, undulating beneath a thin cotton t-shirt had been further tapered by campaign stickers for ‘Hashemi.’ In last summer’s presidential election, several candidates pursuing the youth vote […]

…Thirteen years since I first entered this place and I always till now still feel the absolute sharp divide between the outside and the inside every single time I walk in and out… Hassan Khan, 17 and in AUC (extract) In the desert beyond Sharjah’s scrappy industrial sprawl lies the emirate’s eight-year-old University City. The […]

The 1933 rendering of Plan Obus for Algiers demonstrates Le Corbusier’s superimposition of modern forms: the long arching roadway that includes housing-his viaduct city-connecting central Algiers to its suburbs and the curvilinear complex of housing in the heights that accesses the waterfront business district via an elevated highway bypassing the Casbah. By the time Le […]

Nasr (Victory) City, or Medinet Nasr, is one of Cairo’s earliest “satellite cities,” a government-sponsored urban development that originally covered 6,300 feddans (6,539 acres) of desert land along the airport road between Abbasiyya and Heliopolis. In its early stages, Medinet Nasr represented the new Nasserist government’s approach to remedying Cairo’s booming population and infrastructural growing […]

Built during the late 1970s as part of the Shah’s push toward western-style modernization, Ekbatan is a massive community, one of the largest of its kind in the Middle East, sprawling through the center of Tehran. The complex of housing, shops, services and park-like interstitial space cuts an imposing 500 acre swath across the westernmost […]

Images by Solmaz Shahbazi According to urban myths surrounding Istanbul’s Tophane district, murder and robbery are common, walking around in the evening is unsafe, and prostitution and drugs are rampant. This neighborhood, where I happen to live, is an area of the city near the main cosmopolitan cultural centers of Taksim and Galata; its residents […]

Iran is a fascinating place. On the surface it seems so similar to Egypt (a country I call home), but once you move past the surface, you note how different the two countries in fact are. Trying to find out anything about Iran is a difficult task. The most prolific source is the Western media, […]

NEWS

PREVIEWS
Curatorial Column: Terms Falling
Akram Zaatari

Museums Column: The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
Tirdad Zolghadr

Infrastructure Column: Arts and Selling America
Negar Azimi

Work in Progress: Mehrnaz Afzali’s The Red Card
Sohrab Mohebbi

Work in Progress: Feral Trade Wild Market Rice Cookers
Antonia Carver

Opinion: Art as European Invention
Charlotte Bydler

Travel: Baghdad Deluxe
Seif El Din with Negar Azimi

Artist Profile: Wael Shawky
Mary Blair Taylor

ENVY
Intro: Envy as consumer credo and political temperament
Tirdad Zolghadr

Pashmina Power: Class Structure in international arts funding
Nav Haq

Nuclear Capabilities Aside: The trickle-up politics of Ahmadinejad
Coco Ferguson

Envy and Luck: The bliss of ignorance
Bilal Khbeiz
Translated by Walid Sadek

California McDreaming: Fast food in Tehran
Soheyl Shahsavari

Mahrokh Mosta’ari in Tehran Remaking Hair in Georgia

Spoiled by the Promise of Brilliance: American universities in the Arab World
Antonia Carver

He who eats alone chokes: The global mythology of the evil eye
Yahia Lababidi

A Persia more French: Orientalist bon vivant Paul Poiretand creator of mass haute couture
Porochista Khakpour

Land of the Seven Scarves: The Kuchis, Afghanistan’s nomads
Elizabeth Rubin

Artist Project in collaboration with Bidoun: One day you’ll miss me
Shirana Shahbazi

ARCHITECTURE
Yesterday’s Utopia: What can we learn by looking back at large-scale modernism?
Brian Ackley

Blocking the Casbah:
Le Corbusier’s Algerian fantasy
Brian Ackley

Medinat Nasr
Clare Davies

Super Center: Life in Tehran’s largest housing development
Brian Ackley

Istanbul’s Gated Communities
Pelin Tan

ART
Paul Chan on Despotism, democracy and the Fetish
Negar Azimi

Artist Project: Coloring Book
Ahmet Ogut and Sener Ozmen

Responding to War
Tom Holert

DESIGN
Arabic Typeface Design in a Digital Age
Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFares

FASHION
For the Poet has a Butcher’s Face and the Butcher a Poet’s
Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili

FILM
Hysterical Repetition: Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige’s A Perfect Day
Antonia Carver

Kiarostami’s Close-Up revisited
Coco Ferguson

Emotional Fields
Hassan Khan

BOOKS
Flame Wars: A brief history of blogging in Tehran
Alaa Abd El Fattah

REVIEWS

PRODUCTS

COOKING
Nav Haq

BIDOUN PHRASE BOOK
The Contemporary Traveler’s Indispensable Phrases

AFTERTHOUGHT
Stephen Wright