Biography of Professor Sharareh Salehi
Sharareh Salehi, born on January 30, 1965, in Tehran, is an Iranian artist, poet, and author based in Paris. She is a specialist in Persian, Indo-Persian, and Mughal painting, a curator, and a university lecturer. During her childhood, she attended the Jeanne d’Arc School in Tehran, and in her teenage years, she obtained her French diploma from the Alliance Française in Paris. She then pursued her undergraduate and postgraduate studies in art orientation, graphic design, and art research at Farabi University, the University of Art, and the Faculty of Fine Arts at Tehran University.
Due to her growing cultural and artistic activities, she was granted an artistic residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2001 and received a Cultural Management Scholarship from the Ifa Foundation in Stuttgart in 2002. Later, she expanded her artistic studies with a scholarship from the International Cultural Center of Hammamet, Tunisia, in 2004.
Sharareh Salehi began her cultural activities in Tehran Municipality as the Artistic Director of the Bahman Cultural Center’s project to convert a slaughterhouse into the Bahman Cultural Center (1989-1991). This initiative lasted for eight years. Her work also involved planning and overseeing the creation of multiple museums, designing the first Research Gallery in Tehran, and designing and establishing 25 galleries across various districts of Tehran, repurposing spaces for cultural activities (1992-1998).
Subsequently, she worked for nearly a decade at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMOCA), where she founded the International Cultural Cooperation Department (1998-2007). She curated the first exhibitions of prominent European artists such as Gerhard Richter, Hermann Glöckner, and Heinz Mack at TMoCA. One of her notable projects was organizing the first International Conference on Persian Painting Masterpieces, with the participation of 23 distinguished researchers from around the world. She also organized the first Biennale for Contemporary Arab Artists. Additionally, Sharareh Salehi taught courses such as History of Art, History of Islamic Art and Architecture, and History of Persian Painting at the University of Art and Soureh University (1997-2007).
During this period, she consistently held numerous conferences at European universities and museums on topics such as Persian Painting and Its Schools, Introduction to Key Illustrated Manuscripts, Contemporary Iranian Art, and Iranian Women Artists.
From 2007 to 2010, Sharareh Salehi managed several projects in Abu Dhabi, which laid the groundwork for the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. These academic art projects were carried out at the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) and the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation (ADMAF). Some of these projects included the Isfahan Workshop, Picasso ArtScape, Sculpture on the Beach, Iranian Cinema Weekends, the Arab Music Festival, A Window into the World of the Impressionists, and more. In 2010, Sharareh Salehi also served as the Visual Arts Director for the Seventh Abu Dhabi Art Festival.
Her passion for learning led her to continue her studies in Oriental Studies at the University of Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle, specializing in Arab World Studies with a focus on Andalusian Art (2010-2011). She later received her PhD in Oriental Studies, focusing on Indo-Persian and Mughal Art from the University of Strasbourg (2011-2015). She then pursued postdoctoral research at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE), where, from 2015 to 2019, she worked on the illustrations of various versions of Qisas al-Anbiya at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF). During this period, she also collaborated with the Center for Oriental Studies in Paris, the Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques (CNRS), and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University while continuing her postdoctoral research at the National Institute of Art History (INHA).
Thanks to her extensive education and research activities, the publication of over seventy articles and four books, and the translation of numerous works, in 2017, she was granted authorization by the French Ministry of Higher Education to teach at French universities with the title of “Maître de Conference”. She has also worked as a guest professor at Ecole Art et Culture(EAC) in Paris.
Sharareh Salehi’s publications focus on the influence of Persian art on the art of other countries. After fifteen years of studying and researching various Persian painting schools, she became acutely aware of the wide-reaching impact of Persian art globally. Continuing her research into Ottoman-Persian painting, she explored the influence of Persian painting on Indian art, which resulted in her comprehensive book Persian Painting in India (15th-17th Centuries): Aesthetic and Sufi Approaches, published by L’Harmattan, Paris, in 2022. This book was introduced with forewords by two prominent French scholars, Francis Richard and Pierre Lory. Two other books by Sharareh Salehi, titled Herat, Bukhara, Mashhad: Cradles of Persian Culture and The Great Masters of Persian Calligraphy, are also being published by L’Harmattan.
Throughout her 17 years of migration from Iran, Sharareh Salehi has tirelessly worked to promote and elevate Iranian culture. Her deep love for her homeland has led her to maintain strong academic and cultural ties with universities and museums in Iran, where she continues to serve as a guest professor and academic advisor.
Sharareh Salehi is a member of TIMA (Islamic Manuscripts Association in London), ACHT (Association for the Culture and History of the Timurid Dynasty in Paris), and the Iranian Institute for the Development of Visual Arts in Tehran.
Artistic Biography
Sharareh Salehi began her professional artistic career as a theatre actress during her teenage years, under the guidance of Mohammad Ali Keshavarz and Jafar Vali. She had been drawing since the age of two and began writing poetry at the age of thirteen, always participating actively in her school’s cultural activities. At the age of nineteen, she started collaborating with the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (Kanoon) in the fields of illustration and translation. One of the outcomes of this collaboration was the translation of the book What Do We See? What Is It? from Italian to Persian, which earned her the Best Children’s Book Translation Award in 1989. This book became one of the best-selling books of Kanoon and has been reprinted every year since its publication.
Other translated works from this period include books by Victor Hugo, Five Tales by Guy de Maupassant, and Marcel Marceau: The Adventure of Silence. Additionally, Sharareh Salehi translated numerous art-related articles in the fields of graphic design and illustration.
Sharareh Salehi’s long-standing passion for the performing arts led her to return to the stage in the 1980s, where she acted in two children’s plays. Later, she took on the role of scene designer for the prestigious plays Si-morgh, Simorgh, and Hamlet, directed by Dr Qotb al-Din Sadeghi in 1989 and 1991. The scene designs for these productions, with significant differences in execution, both performed at the main hall of the City Theater, were well-received for their innovation and garnered multiple positive reviews at the time.
Sharareh Salehi is a prolific artist. She has held 26 solo exhibitions of her paintings in Tehran, Paris, Carthage, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Neuchâtel, and has participated in 63 group exhibitions in Iran, China, Tunisia, France, Cyprus, Armenia, Venezuela, Syria, the Netherlands, Italy, Croatia, the UAE, Germany, and the United States.
Sharareh is a bilingual poet, writing poetry in both Persian and French. Her French poetry has been published multiple times in literary magazines in Belgium and France. Her Persian poetry was featured for many years in the Bukhara magazine, and a collection of her poems, selected by Ali Dehbashi, titled On the Roof of the Sky, was published in 2004 by Shahab Saqib Publications in Tehran.
Works in Museums and collections:
• British Museum, London.
• Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.
• Paris Municipality (4th district), France.
• Tunisian Ministry of Culture, Tunis.
• Visual Arts Foundation, Tehran.
• Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH).
• Abu Dhabi Music & Art Foundation (ADMAF).
• Imam Ali Museum, Tehran.
• Abadan Museum of Contemporary Art.
• Tehran Municipality.
• Iranian Studies Foundation, Tehran.
• Grand Islamic Encyclopedia Centre, Tehran.
• Persian Heritage Foundation, Columbia University, USA.
• Other private collections in Iran, France, UAE, Spain, Germany, Switzerland & the United States.
Awards:
• Diploma of Honor and Best Award of Drawing& Illustration, Saint-Cyr Art, France, 2024.
• Selected article for the Sixth Conference on Plastic Arts, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, 2004.
• Diploma of Honor and Best Award of Painting, China International Art Expo, Beijing, 1997.
• Selected article for the Second Conference on Plastic Arts, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, 1993.
• Selected published poster for Zurich International Press “Graphis”,1992.
• Selected published poster for Zurich International Press “Graphis”, 1991.
• Diploma of honour for the best translation of the children’s book “Beyond What We See”, Center for Cultural Development of Children & Young Adults, 1989.
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