IT’S NOT EASY to find the right moniker for Fereydoun Ave. Cumbersome hyphenates like artist-designer-gallerist seem reductive as labels for a métier that is more than the sum of its parts. Ave’s own artwork, marked by a theatrical sensibility, spans media (painting, collage, assemblage). He has produced stage sets, costumes, domestic interiors, and furniture, in addition to making frequent forays into graphic design. He has founded commercial galleries and experimental spaces. In his hometown of Tehran, he has a reputation for generosity, mentorship, and community-building and is also valued as the rare artist to have returned to live and work in Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. “I’m a bridge, darling,” he told me recently.
The long-running exhibition of international art offers an indispensable lesson in art outside the bounds of America’s reach and a different way to see history.