Studio Parisa H.

Parisa H. trained in the classical miniature workshop tradition in Shiraz, learning to burnish wasli paper, grind mineral pigment, and lay gold leaf the same way apprentices have for centuries. What she paints on that surface is where the practice turns: instead of court scenes and gardens, she renders traffic circles, apartment balconies, and women on motorbikes, holding the old flattened perspective and jewel-toned palette against distinctly contemporary subjects. Each piece takes weeks — the gold leaf alone requires several sessions of burnishing before a single figure is drawn over it. The tension between an old, exacting technique and an unmistakably present-day subject is what makes the work hers. Pieces reach All The Good Things through a screened export partner working out of Shiraz.

Studio Parisa H. paints from Shiraz in the neo-miniature tradition — the old technique of gouache and gold leaf on wasli paper, turned toward subjects the miniaturists never had to draw.

Shiraz, Iran

That a technique built for court scenes can hold a woman on a motorbike without either one flinching.