Art in the Village
Decentralizing Contemporary Art & Mapping Lived Geographies
For decades, contemporary visual arts have largely remained confined within the polished boundaries and white-cube spaces of metropolitan galleries. This geographical concentration has inadvertently deepened the disconnect between non-urban communities and modern visual language. Initiated in 2007 by visual artist and curator Jalaleddin Mashmooli alongside the Hajm-e Sabz Art Group, the “Art in the Village” (Honar dar Roosta) initiative emerged as a deliberate response to this isolation—a movement aimed at decentralizing art and bridging community engagement with ecological awareness.
Over the course of more than a decade, this continuous, independent project brought contemporary painters, sculptors, and environmental artists into direct contact with over 75 villages across regional Iran—spanning the ancient Hyrcanian forests of Mazandaran and Gilan to the rural landscapes of Golestan, Kurdistan, and Ardabil.
From White Cubes to Open-Air Canvas Fields
The foundational ethos of Art in the Village is deceptively simple yet profoundly radical: relocating the creative act from institutional studios into the rhythm of everyday rural life. Within this framework, contemporary art refrains from acting as an authoritative teacher; instead, it serves as a shared medium for dialogue.
Key operational dynamics of the initiative
Unconfined Creation Spaces
Canvases and installations are deployed directly on forest floors, riverbanks, and narrow village pathways.
Clothesline Galleries
Domestic clotheslines and wooden village fences are transformed into open-air exhibition platforms, displaying freshly created works directly to local residents.
Participatory Collaboration
Children, local elders, and farmers create alongside visiting contemporary artists, executing public murals, site-specific sculptures, and community-led environmental interventions.
This immediate, unmediated encounter fostered a distinct model of Socially Engaged Art in Middle Eastern practice—one where the artwork is not merely a static object, but a tangible byproduct of shared living experience.
Sociological Impact and Ecological Memory
A defining characteristic of the project is its ability to demystify art as an exclusive luxury commodity, repurposing it as a tool for ecological reflection. Through participatory workshops, local communities develop a renewed awareness toward their immediate environments, botanical heritage, and regional conservation.
This sustained socio-artistic impact elevated Art in the Village beyond a series of local events. The initiative has been documented and analyzed in seminal academic literature on the sociology of contemporary Iranian art—most notably in the research of Dr. M. R. Moridi—and remains a reference case study in Iranian art universities.
The Dual Axes of Jalaleddin Mashmooli’s Practice
For Jalaleddin Mashmooli, his studio practice and his curatorial work with Art in the Village are intrinsically connected. The expressive weight, raw textures, and heavy impasto technique defining his large-scale canvas series—such as the Colchicum (Hasrat) and Bulls collections—are directly nourished by the soil, flora, and collective memory of his rural studio in Koutena.
By embedding contemporary art into community life, Mashmooli’s curatorial practice continuously grounds his studio output, imbuing his canvases with authentic ecological resonance and human narrative.