Where Art, Design And Fashion Meet: The Curious Universe of Pari Ehsan

Pari, we have been following your trajectory in the art world through your online presence with your creative and insightful content for a few years now. We are delighted to chat with you and learn more about how you operate in the visual art world. Tell us how you first got involved with the art world?

I entered the art world through a serendipitous encounter with a Helen Frankenthaler painting. I had spent a day in Chelsea attempting to take a headshot for what I thought at the time would be the website for my new interior design firm. This encounter with a monumental Frankenthaler painting, the juxtaposition of color, texture and feelings marked a miraculous detour from the official path or narrative gained from my education in architecture. The website then transmuted into a visual and sensory universe, where to this day I document and fuse contemporary art, design and fashion that I find special. It has become a platform for discovery.

This shift is fascinating and seems so natural. Can you best describe yourself in a few words?

Determined, curious, innately optimistic, intuitive.

We would add “filled with positivity”! Your background in architecture, fashion and design clearly influenced your current role in the art world. And you have achieved a balanced combination of these elements in your visual world.

Architecture school instilled in me a rigor for research and analysis. Essentially, it sharpened my ability to dig deep and to be expansive in my approach to understanding the cultural, social, environmental and historical aspects that may inform an artist’s visual language. While my initial work (in interior architecture and furniture design) had an inherent utilitarian function, I found myself drawn to a more open-ended artistic field. Fashion and the potential it gives to assume every guise you desire, the fusion of this with architecture, painting, sculpture into one singular poetic vision is my garden of eden. My hope is that reappropriating art in the context of fashion could provide an alternate way of viewing and engaging with the work, a rewilding in our ways of seeing and interpreting.

Over the years, you have collaborated with galleries, artists, and also fairs like the Art Collaboration Kyoto (which was breathtakingly beautiful!). Which other projects are dear to your heart?

My collaboration with the Art Collaboration Kyoto fair took me to Japan for the first time – a forever dream of mine. Everything is done with such care and craft in Japanese culture. The ACK fair conveyed the essence of this and prompted the question: what should Art express today? There is value in connecting the most distant cultures and starting a dialogue that goes beyond stereotypes. For me it was an apt moment to reflect on how I can enrich this chapter in our existence through the universal language of art.

My project with Art Collaboration Kyoto brought me to the artist Hiroshi Sugimoto’s life’s work embedded in nature in the Kataura district of Odawara, Enoura Observatory. Perched on the Hakone Mountains, peppered with tangerine trees overlooking the Sagami Bay are Sugimoto’s trove of monuments with structures aligned to frame the sun’s movement throughout the seasons. Set in a place poised to be a future relic, I paired my surroundings with an Issey Miyake satsuma base hued knit where the front and the back are knitted in different directions giving me a twisted shape with fin-like flaps. Almost as if a fish had evolved to develop deformities.

These projects, sites and practices grounded in ancient habits were used to predict and imagine the future. A formative (and my first) Pari Dust collaboration was with the World Gold Council. I traveled to India iced in jewels of fairytale beauty for an editorial celebrating artisanal gold craftsmanship enshrined in Indian culture. The richness of sensory experiences and the infusion of natural phenomena into life processes and world views was perception shifting for me. This initial collaboration sparked a series of collaborations with fine jewelry houses such as Hemmerle, Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and a sustained interest in pairing jewelry as sculpture, alive in its materiality, with contemporary art.

Working directly with artists allows serendipitous magic to occur. My partnership with La Prairie for the launch of their Platinum Rare Night Elixir (the most transformative skincare product I’ve ever used) led me to collaborate with the artist Seana Gavin whose surrealist hand-cut collage work I felt would be a dream for the project. I shot custom Pari Dust imagery styling myself in a galactic fashion as well as capturing still life product shots which Seana then incorporated into a series of 3 unique collages, Triptych for Reinvention.

These projects are so mesmerizing. They are filled with creativity, elegance and spark so much inspiration in each of us. Your love for art is beyond the traditional art canons since it really merges several mediums, almost like a contemporary Gesamtkunstwerk as it was historically referred to. Do you also collect art?

I do, I collect art and design pieces. I am a creature of my environment and being surrounded by what I love enhances every element of my existence. The work I’ve collected thus far is architectural in nature and minimalistic. I love Brazilian modernism, I have a special chair by Sergio Rodrigues, some Eileen Gray pieces. My wishlist is long!

An extension of my creature environment is the launch of a new installation-based store concept fusing art, fashion and design. A physical space that myself and a dear friend will open in East London this spring! The initial iteration will be curated by Francesca Gavin and the space will be reimagined under a curatorial theme each season.

Thank you for sharing this news with us! We cannot wait to see it in London! Excited for your project ahead! You also take part in curatorial projects. Can you tell us a little more about those projects?

The desire and the need to share the beauty of my Iranian heritage, the humanity of its people led to my first independently curated exhibition in December of 2022 with the Iranian multidisciplinary artist Leila Seyedzadeh. Her work conceptualizes imaginary landscapes suspended in a state of placelessness. Under the Same Sky came together in a dire moment which has been ongoing as the Iranian people pursue freedom from an oppressive theocratic regime. Leila’s textile installation, displayed beneath a skylight in Brooklyn and shown alongside a livestream projection of the sky in Tehran, created an opening for viewers to enter a state of connectivity between New York and Tehran. A focus of my curatorial practice is to reimagine approaches to transcultural dynamics that continue to shape our contemporary moment.

On the horizon is an exhibition between Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmian and Frank Stella that myself and curator Leyla Fakhr have been developing for some time. It is in many ways the culmination of my work thus far; to create a harmonious connection between two distinct cultures, to highlight the universal language of art and friendship which transcends essentialist binaries. Monir and Frank were dear friends! I’m thrilled to share more on this soon!

As you know, at newcube, we focus on championing emerging artists globally while offering a more conventional advisory service to global collectors. And your unconventional creativity and strength in digital content is admirable. Would you give any tips to artists who wish to enter the art world in a creative and innovative way like you did?

Lean into what gives you an emotional reaction. Ask yourself how you can add value in a space that you love and believe in. Support your friends, your community and do it with veracity. Gather with them, make something together, let it catalyze you. Cherish and seek mentors you admire. I believe that the future is in the collective, where the true power lies.

Thank you so much Pari for your sharing about your passion and these wonderful projects. Literally speaking to you sparks our creativity and this contribution to the creative world is very valuable. See you soon in London!