In Tehran the weekend lands on Friday — so that's the day she walks the galleries, hunting the newest work and the artists worth bringing West.
In Tehran the weekend lands on Friday — so that's the day she walks the galleries, hunting the newest work and the artists worth bringing West.
Why Friday? Because in Tehran the week doesn't end on a Sunday — it ends on a Friday. That is the city's day of rest, and it is the day the galleries unveil their new shows. So Friday is mine. I leave the apartment early, before the traffic thickens, and walk north into the gallery streets where the doors are just being propped open and the coffee is only half made.
There is a rhythm to it. A white room, a quiet hello, a slow lap — and then either nothing, or the small electric thing that happens when a picture will not let you leave. Most days it is nothing, and that is fine. You cannot find the right thing if you are not willing to walk past a hundred wrong ones.
“I buy with my feet. If a piece doesn't pull me back across the room, it isn't ours.”
By noon I am usually in a courtyard café with a notebook, three galleries deep, sorting what I saw from what I felt. The newest names, the canvases barely dry from the week — the ones that stay with me through lunch are the ones I go back for.
This is the whole job, really. Not sourcing — looking. Walking the city every Friday until it hands me the newest work and the artists worth carrying West, for All The Good Things.
