Overview
Hamed Yousefi specializes in the history of modern and contemporary art, focusing on Islamic image theories in Iran after photography. His work questions disciplinary separations between modern and Islamic art, and argues that in Iran, the term hunar-i islāmī (Islamic art) was a modern coinage, initially introduced through translations of European art-historical writings and subsequently transformed into a future-oriented project of decolonial imagining. Islamic and modern art, therefore, developed in dialogue with one another, charting linked and interdependent paths. Yousefi is especially interested in affordances of Islamic image theories, notably the concept of “creative imagination” (khayal), for theorizations of modern art.
Yousefi is currently working on two book manuscripts that explore Iranian art before the country’s two major revolutions. "How Modern Art Became Islamic" is envisaged as a counter-monograph of the constitutionalist activist and court painter Muhammad Ghaffari Kamal al-Mulk (c. 1863–1940). It examines theological debates about photography in late 19th-century Iran and traces the visual and political receptions of those debates in paintings produced by Kaml al-Mulk in the years leading to the 1906 Constitutional Revolution. The second book, "1963: A Year in the Life of God," explores modern refashionings of Islamic image theories in two concurrent movements before the 1979 Islamic Revolution—the Saqqakhaneh art movement and the project of Islamic governance by Ayatollah Khomeini.
Yousefi received his PhD in Art History from Northwestern University, with a certificate from the Middle Eastern and North African Studies Program. Prior to that, he received an MA in Aesthetics and Art Theory from the Center for Research in Modern European Philosophy in London. As a filmmaker, Yousefi has produced numerous documentary and essay films, including a four-episode series on aesthetic histories of political Islam in Iran. His art-critical writings have appeared in various magazines and exhibition catalogs including e-flux and publications by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MAXXI (Rome).
Research Focus
Art History, art theory, Islamic Studies, Iranian Studies, modern European philosophy
Publications
Journal Articles
“The Race for Appropriation: Blackness, Authorship, and Ligon on Mapplethorpe,” October 183 (Winter 2023): 50–74.
“History or Project: The Double Life of Islamic Art Since the 1970s,” Regards: la revue des arts du spectacle 28 (2022): 123–136.
Book Chapters
“Between Illusion and Aspiration: Morteza Avini's Cinema and Theory of Global Revolution,” Global 1979: Geographies and Histories of the Iran Revolution, eds. Ali Mirsepassi and Arang Keshavarzian (Cambridge University Press, 2021): 357–388.
“Provincialism Perfected: Global Contemporary Art and Uneven Development” (with David Hodge), Supercommunity, eds. Julieta Arenda, Brian Kuan-Wood, and Anton Vidokle (Verso, 2017).
Edited Volume
Siah Armajani: Critical Essays and Interviews. Co-Edited with David Hodge. Translated by Shervin Shahamipour. Tehran: Bon-gah, 2020; co-author of “Editors' Preface” (pp. 7–10) and author of “Profane and Class-Conscious Illuminations” (pp. 124–156). [in Persian]