Last week, the Iranian government replaced the director of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA) after an aerial performer botched their performance above a beloved museum installation. On March 12, the artist collapsed while performing above Japanese artist Noriyuki Haraguchi's famed 1977 installation Matter and Mind in the museum's atrium. The installation is a 14-by-21-foot rectangle filled with 1,190 gallons of oil. The acrobat splashed into the oil during the performance, staining the floor with the thick liquid.
Two days later, Mahmud Salari, Iran's deputy culture minister for artistic affairs, announced the appointment of Ebadorreza Eslami-Kulai as the new director of TMoCA. The government made no mention of the incident. The museum apologized for the incident and promised to restore the sculpture.
Part of the performer's body collided with the oil, causing some oil to spill and be replaced. The preservation of the museum's works of art is one of the museum's primary responsibilities, according to the statement. "We hope that with greater accuracy and sensitivity, we will not see such mistakes in the future," the statement continued. Yaser Khaseb's aerial performance, titled Cat of the Silk Road, was part of the opening program for the exhibition "Panj Ganj," which honored the 12th-century Iranian poet Nizami Ganjavi.
The artist later posted videos of the incident to his Instagram account. Khaseb is pictured hanging upside down from a rope attached to the museum's ceiling, his hands hovering above the artwork. A collaborator standing on the pool's edge swings Khaseb backward, causing the artist's upper body to skim the liquid's glassy surface. He is lifted upwards, groaning, and appears to try to continue the performance until he is lowered to the floor in front of a stunned audience, which offers a tentative round of applause.
Khaseb stated on Instagram that the emphasis should be on the spontaneity of performance art rather than preservation. "A work of art can be reborn in contact with other works," Khaseb said, adding that "a new work can be produced from the interaction of two works."
Following the debut of the original work, titled Oil pool, at the sixth edition of Documenta in Kassel, Germany that same year, an earlier version of the sculpture by Haraguchi was installed at the TMoCA in 1977. Haraguchi, who died in 2020, came to the museum to help restore the artwork on the 40th anniversary of its arrival in Tehran. He noted at the time that, of the 20 oil pools he installed in locations around the world, TMoCA's was the only edition that was still standing.
Selena Mattei