Nowruz

Nowruz
Images, Sounds and Voices from Contemporary Iran
March 20 – November 22, 2026
Bea Vita, Fondamenta delle Capuzine 3082, Venice
Chapter I – Opening March 20, 6pm

This exhibition project was born from the encounter between Yasra Pouyeshman and Mara Sartore, developed through a dialogue around a show dedicated to contemporary Iranian artists, originally conceived for the space of KOOCH in Venice.

With the worsening political and social situation in Iran and the outbreak of uprisings, the realisation of the exhibition gradually became impossible, risking cancellation or indefinite postponement. Faced with this forced suspension, Mara Sartore invited Yasra Pouyeshman to merge the project into the exhibition programme of Bea Vita, transforming interruption into an opportunity for continuity.

Bea Vita thus hosts the first chapter of a project conceived as an open, evolving organism, capable of adapting to an unstable and fragmented temporality. An initial selection of works – necessarily limited to those already stored in KOOCH’s warehouse, as communications with Iran are currently interrupted and artists are unable to ship new works – initiates a path that will unfold over time through subsequent chapters.

The decision to proceed in chapters responds not only to practical necessity but defines a precise curatorial position. The exhibition embraces partiality, incompleteness, and suspension as conditions of the present, transforming them into an open narrative structure capable of welcoming new artists and new works as political, logistical, and relational conditions allow. Through its own narrative, the project also acknowledges those artists and works that cannot be physically present. Absence thus becomes presence.

The first chapter brings together works by Reihane Raei, Siroo, Afsoongar, Mahboobeh Yazdani, Ehsan Shayegh, Farnaz Aboutalebi, and Aynaz – artists who, despite the diversity of their languages, share a common tension between memory, identity, and transformation. The project’s visual identity and exhibition poster are designed by Babak Safari, whose research bridges traditional Iranian art and contemporary design, transforming the graphic device into a space of cultural resonance.