During Maison&Objet Paris in January, the Iranian artist and carpet designer Mirmola exhibited his works for the first time. These are rugs that all enthusiasts in our industry recognise and appreciate. This debut display is part of a larger transition in Mirmola’s life that has seen him and his family move from Iran to Paris mere months ago. When I talk to him, he points out that this change has already had an influence on his work, which is currently in production and will be shown later this year. For this article, I want to focus on four of the main pieces he showed at M&O, demonstrating the quintessence of Mirmola’s artistic output.
Mirmola has background in carpet design that few have achieved. In 2001 he received a bachelor’s degree in handwoven carpet design from Isfahan, and he obtained a master’s degree in handicrafts from Tehran in 2006. For two years he then learned about making felt rugs from two masters in a village close to the jungle. The felt helped him find an abstract method of expression, his first signature style which is now well developed.
Now made in his workshops in Azerbaijan, Mirmola’s rug designs combine this sense of tradition and Iranian identity with modern-day motifs and semantics. Stories about life and its paradoxes run through his work, intergrating a serious or traditional voice with a modern/humorous one.
Now made in his workshops in Azerbijan, Mirmola’s rug designs combine this sense of tradition and Iranian identity with modern-day motifs and semantics. Stories about life and its paradoxes run through his work, intergrating a serious or traditional voice with a modern/humorous one.
Destiny was the statement piece of the display in Paris, and is now the statement piece of COVER 78, deservedly adorning the front cover. Woven as a pure-silk kilim-and-pile carpet, this design in Mirmola’s own words ‘shares two DNAs, a contemporary attitude with traditional motifs from Garus, Kurdistan’. It is the latest design by Mirmola and is depicts the paradox of the sadness and happiness of our lives.
On the left side we see a bottle of wine, near which is written ‘bitter’ in Farsi. The message is that life can be bitter even though there is a beautiful side to it. The saw, depicted on the right side, can hurt and cut connections, or it can bring something positive into life. Behind our image’s jumping figure, a fragment of an Iranian poem is written in English.
‘Kiss me’ is the chorus of the song sung by a general who will be executed the next day, a song to his daughter. Here the paradox is a bitter-sweetness. Humour is also present in the Ouch rug, which has various versions. It depicts a safety pin with a design held inside, contained but also trapped. In the fish version, the Ouch becomes the symbol of life; we as the fish are stuck inside, waiting to escape, but when will we be free? The version with callligraphy written inside the pin is the story of our lives, the writing expressing what needs to be said.
In the Shah Maghsoud designs, a cypress tree sits on heart area of the dress representing those who dedicate their lives to beauty, literature, art and poetry. The silkpile rug is in the shape of an oriental robe, which has a significance on many levels. With designs like these, Mirmola aims to break free of rug conventions such as shape and expression.
People’s conception of Mirmola’s pieces vary from person to person. For the artist, Shah Maghsoud could symbolise hugging and welcoming if hung near a front door, but to another person it could mean something ‘akin to sacrifice’. He designs in a way that everyone can get a different message from it.
The Iraninan name of the final kilim-and pile-silk rug is Hast-o-Mast, which actually translates as ‘to be and to be drunk’, but Mirmola calls it Transcendence. The unusual, conceptual shape is that of a woman’s body and represents the moment a human reaches awareness, experiencing the happiness and bitterness of life. The Iranian typography featured in the shape had Japanese visitors at Maison&Objet fascinated, as the shapes are similar to other texts such as Japanese.
‘I make a form of art. I am an artist as I have a lot of poems in my heart,’ comments Mirmola, when I ask how he views his work. ‘It has taken me a long time to learn the traditional methods and motifs and develop my new language. I am an artist, but I also have to manage one hundred people at the factory. I live in a dream mindset, but I have to manage practical things too.’
Mirmola sees that Iran’s beautiful carpet heritage is being diluted by the business mindset of company owners. There is plenty of talent in Iran, but it is not always easy to be an artist and a business person. He hopes to inspire a new generation, but for this patience is needed. For Mirmola, he looks to the poems of Rumi: ‘Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing’.
