About 20 galleries and art spaces from Iran sent work to the London show. Prices run from about £200 to £3,000.
Close to 200 works by around 100 artists who live in Iran go on show at Ab-Anbar Gallery in London from 19 to 26 September. The organisers want the group show to bring younger Iranian artists to a wider international audience.
About 20 galleries and art spaces from Iran have contributed to A Present Tense. According to the organisers, much of the work has had little exposure outside the country, so the show gives visitors abroad an unusual chance to see contemporary Iranian art in quantity.
Salman Matinfar, who founded Ab-Anbar, said the show is also about keeping the galleries and their artists afloat. Years of sanctions had already weakened the gallery scene in Iran. Then galleries were forced to shut during the country’s ongoing conflict with the US and Israel, which put the sector under more pressure. Artists face other barriers too. Sanctions make shipping and payments harder, so galleries abroad are often reluctant to take them on, and visa restrictions make travel difficult. Matinfar said everyone involved, from the galleries to the artists, was suffering.
Orkideh Daroodi runs O Gallery in Tehran, and the idea for the show took shape when she and Matinfar started talking it over last year. Daroodi said people outside Iran often want to know how they can help artists there. “We figured it was best to take the works to them.”
Works are priced between roughly £200 and £3,000. Daroodi and Matinfar said the range was chosen with care, so that buyers who are not seasoned collectors can afford a piece and every gallery involved has a chance of a sale. Ab-Anbar has offered its space and is taking no commission.
Matinfar was once part of the art scene in Iran himself. He closed his Tehran gallery and opened the London venue in 2020. Daroodi approached galleries and independent artists across Iran with the plan. Most agreed largely on trust, she said, accepting the risk that nothing guaranteed their work would reach London and come back undamaged. She added that she had not seen a collaboration on this scale in 15 years of working in Iranian art.
The show makes no attempt to sum up Iranian art in a single picture. Daroodi said it brings together a broad mix of styles, subjects and approaches.
A Present Tense runs at Ab-Anbar Gallery in London from 19 to 26 September 2026.
Prices run from about £200 to £3,000.
Around 100 artists who live in Iran, with work sent by about 20 Iranian galleries and art spaces.
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