Iran attracts a lot of media attention related to its nuclear program and the implications thereof. Sabre rattling, both by the Iranian leadership and by Western politicians and pundits, dominates the headlines and steers public discourse. But these offer a narrow prism through which to analyse and define a nation as multifaceted as Iran.
For the first time in recent years the spotlight was brought onto Iran for something other than the nuclear issue when the Iranian production A Separation won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film earlier this year. A domestic drama built around a moral conundrum in Tehran, it is the first Iranian film to claim an Oscar.
Capturing the clamour of life in modern Iran, the movie highlights the divides that exist within Iranian society, between the haves and have-nots and between the urban middle classes and devout working classes. Each of its protagonists, while flawed, has their own moral compass by which to navigate 21st-century life.
They are preoccupied with day-to-day concerns rather than with the nuclear issue or with any adherence to the ideology that underpins the Islamic Republic. As such, the film may do something to redress the notion that the broader Iranian populace is comprised of minions blindly obedient to the mullahs and antagonistic to the West.
At the Oscars, writer-director Asghar Farhadi implicitly addressed this. He accepted the award on behalf of his compatriots, 'people who respect all cultures and civilisations and despise hostility and resentment'. Iran was at last being recognised for its 'rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the heavy dust of politics'.
Love and Devotion: From Persia and Beyond, an exhibition currently at the State Library of Victoria, is similarly bringing to light an alternative view of Iran.
The exhibition brings to Australian shores a collection of illuminated Persian manuscripts from the Bodleian Library, Oxford; objects of intense beauty and refined artistry produced in the princely courts of Iran and the Persian-influenced domains of Turkey and India from the 13th to 18th centuries.
The inspiration and subject matter for the manuscripts were the works of the master mystic poets including Nizami, Sa'adi, Hafiz and Rumi.
The manuscripts' recurring motifs and themes of gardens, flowers, songbirds and notions of romantic and mystical love