Monir shahroudy farmanfarmaian biography of christopher

Monir Farmanfarmaian looked up at the mosaic of mirrors that covered the mausoleum’s walls and ceiling.

Monir shahroudy farmanfarmaian biography of christopher newton

It was the moment that reshaped her artistic career.

“The very space seemed on fire, the lamps blazing in hundreds of thousands of reflections,” she would later write in her memoir. “I imagined myself standing inside a many-faceted diamond and looking out at the sun.

“It was a universe unto itself, architecture transformed into performance, all movement and fluid light, all solids fractured and dissolved in brilliance in space, in prayer.

I was overwhelmed.”

The year was 1975, and the setting was the Shah Cheragh (King of Light) shrine in the Iranian city of Shiraz, that had been decorated in splintered mirrors since the 14th Century.

At the time she visited the shrine, Monir was already a recognised artist in the US and her native Iran, but the epiphany in Shiraz left her “fired up with ideas”, she wro