In downtown Tehran, amid unattractive modern buildings, the tall brick chimney of Argo Factory has the effect of a beacon. Since its creation five years ago, this private art center has established itself as one of the unmissable places in the Iranian capital, with an ultra-contemporary and international program that is worthy of the most cutting-edge museums in Europe or North America.
“It’s simply one of the most beautiful places in Tehran”, enthuses photographer Newsha Tavakolian, whose work was exhibited there in 2020. to the rest of the world, than the complexity within which the arts evolve in the country.
The exhibitions of the foundation, named in reference to the Argo beer, produced within its walls before the Islamic revolution, attract up to 10,000 visitors, a record when other establishments capped a few hundred entries. At the end of October was to open that of a very prominent conceptual artist, the German Michael Sailstorfer. Was to follow an exhibition by French filmmaker darling of moviegoers Chris Marker, who died in 2012, under the curatorship of French critic Jean-Michel Frodon. The recent rehabilitation of the beer factory by the New York agency of Ahmadreza Schricker (Asa North) also did not escape the juries of the Aga Khan and Dezeen architecture prizes, which both rewarded his work. .
An ambitious project
In other times, the founder of Argo Factory, the patron Hamidreza Pejman, would have celebrated this consecration with dignity. But since the Iranian youth uprising, violently repressed by the police, he has temporarily closed the doors of Argo. “Our audience is made up of students who‘we have to listen, explains the 42-year-old entrepreneur. S‘they decide not to go to class anymore, we too have to close. » Hamidreza Pejman, who made his fortune in construction under the presidency of the ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, weighs his words, enjoining us not to distort them. “I have to be politically correct, he whispers. God knows what can happen! I live in Iran, I want to keep a small window open. »
The atmosphere was quite different in 2016 when the collector bought this large brick complex for 2 million dollars. One year after the Iranian nuclear agreement signed in Vienna, the indicators are green. “Foreigners were starting to come back to Iran, we had the feeling that we were going to be part of the world”, remembers Hamidreza Pejman.
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