Banafsheh Hemmati
Banafsheh Hemmati, an Iranian designer-artist, is a master’s graduate of industrial design and her work explores the intersection of art and design. Her passion for philosophy has later led to her obtaining a PhD in philosophy of art. In her doctoral thesis, she has been concerned with the philosophical foundations of the relation between art and geometry. For more than twenty years, Hemmati has been professionally active as a designer, exemplary in founding Banafsheh Hemmati Design Studio in Tehran. Her extensive pursuits in the field of design involve designing furniture, landscape, light, accessories, and jewelry.
Her approach in her jewelries and sculptures which are large-scale jewelries can be best described as “appropriating” Islamic geometry. Motifs of Islamic architecture play a major role in her sculptural and jewelry work. Hemmati employs the diverse geometric patterns of Islamic architecture in her creations and, sometimes, by disrupting
their rigid order, extends the visual and formal capacities of her works. She strives to desacralize the sanctity of Islamic architecture and secularize the geometry.
Her jewelry and sculptures, while are in continuity with each other, differ primarily in scale. By elevating the site of connection to the level of the “body,” her sculptures depart from traditional notions of jewelry as mere adornment for the female body. The traditional interpretation of jewelry in relation to the female body signifies the beauty of that and legitimate it, but her recent jewelries (ex. Body Geometry collection)
defamiliarize this traditional function refocusing attention away from the adorned female body onto the jewelry itself as the subject of the gaze. Thus, the act of looking is directed not towards the body but rather to the adorned jewelry, creating an entirely contemporary interaction with the piece.
Hemmati has shown her works in numerous exhibitions in Iran, the United States, Italy, Germany, Malaysia, Turkey, and the UAE. Besides professional works in the field of design, she is engaged in teaching as well. She has served as a judge at various festivals and has won prestigious awards, including the Florence International Art and Design Award in 2017. She is also a member of Klimt02 (an international platform for contemporary art jewelry and crafts) and contributes as a writer for the Art Jewelry Forum (AJF) in the United States.
In 2023, her installation titled “Seven Cypresses” was exhibited at the “First Sculpture Park of the Middle East,” held at the Dubai World Trade Centre (DIFC), alongside works by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Jeff Koons, and others. She is the only independent artist at DIFC. After the exhibition, the installation was purchased for the art collection of DIFC, where it is now permanently displayed. In this work, Gothic and Islamic
geometry are blended due to their universality, and the artist aimed to bridge East and West through this geometry. The reference to the “cypress tree” symbolizes resilience in Iranian visual culture. The installation is dedicated to the women of Iran, symbolizing their endurance, with the suspended nature of the installation referring to the more than 45 years of suspension experienced by Iranian women.