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About this Story
This story is as much about establishing a friendship based on shared interests as it is about the creative output and future incorporation of Gohar Dashti’s artworks in the Museum for Islamic Art’s permanent collections.‘Stations of Place’ takes its titular cues from the Maqamat (stations or assemblies) of al-Hariri because we acknowledge that the mobility or ‘wandering’ (siyaha) paths adopted by the Maqamat as instrumental to related artworks. Mobility and the search for place or temporary stations of belonging are essential human experiences that the medieval author and artists take on and employ within the content and context of those works.
Place this 13th century painting next to a 2014 photograph by Gohar Dashti, and one wonders what the connection is, if any. With a closer look and consideration, it is possible to see that concepts of mobility, migration and temporary moments of placement feature prominently in both the artworks of Gohar Dashti and also one of Islamic art history’s most treasured examples.
It is with these core themes and a shared investment in nature, landscapes and movement that the researcher-artist, Gohar Dashti and researcher-curator, Margaret Shortle have come together.
Connections over Takht-e Soleyman
Margaret and Gohar first met in the fall of 2022 when both were in Berlin and conducting research on the Unesco World Heritage Site Takht-e Soleyman in Northwest Iran and its surrounding landscape. At that time, Margaret was working with fellow curators Drs. Deniz Erdumann and Ute Franke on the museum’s holdings of tile fragments from Takht-e Soleyman and their presentation in future galleries of the Museum for Islamic Art (opening 2027). The shared interest was not entirely serendipitous but rather one that was cultivated through a series of connections and conversations. The below story is a written reflection of the artist and curator’s initial conversations and continued correspondences over email. The written exchange has been shortened and edited for clarity.
Margaret:
Gohar, I so much enjoyed our first meeting in Berlin because, honestly, the meeting felt too easy, like an exercise in six degrees of separation. We immediately connected over a shared network in both Boston and Munich and our shared interest in mountainous landscapes between both the US and Iran. You had also just finished a written contribution to Survey Practices and Landscape Photography Across the Globe co-edited by Erin Nolan and Sophia Junge, colleagues and friends for us both..
Assemblies in Munich:
Margaret:
At the time, Sophia and I were teaching thematically around mobility and nature, and so we invited you to lecture to the students in Munich, where you presented your artistic process with special attention to Land/s. Prompted by a student, question, you described the series as evocative of a barrier or boundary between the two lands that you inhabit – both the United States and Iran. Admittedly, this description stuck with me, and I wonder whether you still feel similarly about this description today?
Gohar:
Yes, I remember saying that, and I still feel Land/s captures that boundary – though I’d call it more of a threshold now. It’s not a physical wall but an invisible line I constantly straddle. It’s the subtle divide between my life in Iran and my life in the U.S., a space of in-betweeness. In the Land/s series I literally merged two disparate landscapes into one frame to visualize that threshold. That boundary is emotional and cultural: it’s the gap between my memories of home and my reality in a new land. Yet it’s also a meeting point – a place where those two worlds overlap. Nature tends to blur the line; for example, a cypress tree here in Massachusetts might remind me of a cypress in my home town . Still, the connection feels different because the roots are in different soil, a different climate – I can sense the gap even in the similarity. So Land/s is about that paradox. It makes the boundary visible, but it also shows how the natural landscape can bridge my two homes in spite of that divide.
Margaret:
I like that. Threshold nicely highlights the similarities present in the two landscapes photographed and also the ever present yet quiet divide that your Land/s series invokes. Threshold also better engages my initial perception of your artwork and also the bridges enabled by a deeper engagement with the contextual and intellectual underpinnings of art and culture. As a viewer and cultural historian, I was admittedly impressed by how difficult it is to distinguish the American and Iranian landscapes in the series, which plays with my own perception of how closely connected the two countries can be, despite their challenges.
Bridging Research, Heritage and Creativity:
Margaret:
I know I come to my perceptions through a lot of reading and historical research. I also know that you employ research in your artistic process. Can you clarify this?
Gohar:
In my practice, research always begins with a personal question: How do we carry our histories when we move? I explore landscapes, archives, and museum collections to find connections between where I come from and where I am today. Heritage becomes something active, not only in the past but still shaping us now.
When I work with cultural objects or places I haven’t visited, I approach them with care and curiosity. I listen to experts, I learn from the stories held in the museum, and I look for the emotional thread that can speak to audiences here in Berlin. My goal is to create a new meeting point where history and contemporary experience can touch.
You, Margaret, have not experienced Iran or Takht-e Soleyman, first hand. How do you approach curating heritage from places you’ve never been? What helps you bridge the distance between an object’s origin and the audience here in Berlin?
Margaret:
This question is such a big and challenging one. It is true that I have never visited Iran, and it is something I grapple with often in relation to my research and writing. For the sake of brevity, my introduction to the visual and material culture of the broader Persian speaking world from within the United States was so intellectually engaging and visually impressive that further studying these materials neither felt like a self-determined choice nor did it seem odd. As you well know, the Iranian diaspora community in the United States is large, connected and enthusiastic. In those spaces where Persian-language heritage is discussed, the diaspora community is often present and engaged. My academic interests when I first stumbled on the field felt normal and the travel challenges, at that time, were accepted. My studies also unfolded in cosmopolitan spaces, Detroit, Chicago and Boston, where Iranian films and food were readily available.
I have honestly felt a much greater disconnect in Berlin where I am in the position of a foreigner nevertheless still studying Persian visual and material culture and within those spaces that historically enabled my research interests. In the museum, I am connected quite literally with the origins of Islamic art and architecture as a field of study. For now, I bridge the disconnect by continuing to work historiographically with Berlin’s museum and library collections. I guess I view the historic materials and my research, especially in Berlin, to function much like how you perceive Land/s - an imagined threshold that I can occasionally and intellectually bridge but may never truly occupy. Is that not the point of art and art history? I, personally, see great value in the ways in which studying art and cultural history can create greater awareness and often dispel assumptions about other peoples and cultures based on simply not knowing.
Evocative Landscapes and Takht-e Soleyman:
Margaret:
Honestly, it is this approach and your Land/s series that helped me to engage our other shared interest - Takht-e Soleyman. In elevation and optical splendour, Takht-e Soleyman reminds me of similar mountain landscapes in Northwest Colorado where I feel most at home. That intimate familiarity coupled with archival and contemporary imagery enables my engagement and also our conversations. You often ask whether the site can speak through the archives alone, and I must admit that the archival record and fragmentary nature of the archaeological remains function in parts. Of course, scholarly research is dependent upon the historical record, yet truly compelling stories require cooperation and dialogue in the here and now. I learn as much from your perspective and photographs as I do from reading medieval geographies noting the site and related histories. I must take it all in, so to speak, and relish the process.
For example, your panoramic photograph, omits some of the site’s most notable features including the small artesian lake around which the temple was built and also its proximity to Zendan-e Soleyman (Solomon’s prison). The dry and rocky foreground peppered with highland grasses and yellow ferulago nevertheless visually approximate a physical experience of the site’s dry mountainous landscape and surrounding pastures. Your composition intuits a compelling entry and adds nuance to my own research interest and efforts to better contextualize medieval Mongol encampments and tiled fragments in Berlin. Tell me, how did our discussions of Takht-e Soleyman in Berlin impact your perception of the site and your ongoing work?
Gohar:
Berlin was a crash course in Takht-e Soleyman’s history and symbolism for me. Through long conversations and time spent in the archives, I started to understand how the site was designed in harmony with the land—the architecture flows with the volcanic landscape and wraps around the circular lake like a continuation of it.
*A note from Margaret on Gohar's Description of Takht-e Soleyman
Margaret:
Gohar, your description recalls another image of the site, one taken by Erich Schmidt, a German-American archaeologist who conducted aerial surveys of archaeological ruins in Iran in the 1930’s.
Of course the photo lacks the color and clarity of contemporary images, I appreciate that the aerial perspective situates the ruins within their surrounding mountainous pastures. Coupled with your very recent panorama, that offers a hint of green along the horizon, one can imagine the site’s seamless integration in the elevated landscape as you describe it. Missing still is the palace structure, both the ancient Sassanian fire temple and the medieval Mongol (Ilkhanid) refurbishments cloaked in extensive luster-painted ceramic tiles, the fragmentary remains of which are largely split between Iran and Berlin due to both countries cooperative excavations in the late 60’s. Again, it is these fragmented remains that brought us together and helped us to cooperatively bridge our interests in landscapes and the palace structure.
(Photo: Erich Schmidt, Takht-i-Sulaiman, View of Site (“Throne of Solomon”), From an Altitude of 1,000 M on July 27, 1937, AE 676, University of Chicago, Oriental Institute)
Gohar:
While in Berlin, I accessed the library and archives of the Museum für Islamische Kunst, where I studied historic records and catalogues of Ilkhanid tilework from Takht-e Soleyman—many of them not on public view. There, I came across documentation and images of eight-pointed star tiles featuring delicate botanical motifs which completely changed how I imagined the site. These weren’t just ruins anymore—they were once filled with light, color, and sacred symbolism.
So when I returned to the site in Iran, I walked with new eyes. I could picture the missing tiles, the layered stories in the walls. I began to see the connection between nature and myth, how Persian cosmology and material culture merged in this place. Berlin gave me a scholarly and poetic lens, and when I visited again, it felt less like exploring an archaeological site and more like reconnecting with a living, breathing friend from the past. This re-connection has also completely shifted my perception of the site that once felt like a distant, impressive ruin. It has become something far more intimate—almost sacred. The more I’ve researched and returned, the more I’ve felt the site come alive as a layered, breathing archive.
Abstract Horizons
Through my project Abstract Horizons, I’ve been closely observing how landscapes change—visibly and invisibly—through time and human presence. I began with Polaroids taken directly at the site, drawn to its quiet power, the harmony between volcanic rock, sacred water, and centuries of architecture. Then I made a bold choice: I distorted those Polaroids using controlled heat and flame, intentionally altering them to explore how memory, nature, and destruction can coexist. The burn marks became more than just marks—they referenced the Zoroastrian fire rituals once practiced at the site. Fire became both a tool of transformation and a symbol of resilience.
This process made me feel even more connected. Takht-e Soleyman isn’t just a historical site—it’s a place where fire and water, myth and geology, coexist in balance. The lake at its center seems timeless, and yet the landscape is always changing. What fascinates me now is this paradox: that something so ancient can feel so alive.
But I still have questions. What did everyday life look like here? What oral histories survive in the surrounding villages? What do the local people remember or imagine about the lake’s depths? These questions keep me coming back. My relationship has evolved—from distant admiration to a kind of artistic and emotional dialogue. I no longer just look at the site. I listen.
Margaret:
I appreciate your choice to describe that site as alive, and also the notion that you listen. Your description plays into a more embodied engagement with the space and also the necessity to be present. Whereas I can’t yet be present, I am more than happy to listen to you and learn from your experiences. I wonder too if you might consider an engagement with the fragmented poetic inscriptions on the surviving tiles another kind of listening. Or better yet, do you think our dialogue is an act of collaboration that heightens our listening capabilities?
I like to think so. I also like to think that our work as research-artist and research-curator is not all that different. We both have to communicate in writing or pictures what we take in and learn. Because I focus so much on the past rather than the lived experience of the site, I can best contribute historic impressions of the site. About the lake’s depth, for example, the fourteenth-century geographer Ḥamd-Allah Mostawfi marveled at its artesian properties and noted that, ‘like a small lake in size, no boatmen has been able to plumb its depth.’ Of course, I have extracted this from a longer statement about palace site, and must myself write about it in regard to a historical frame of reference. What I most appreciate about your work is how you may grapple with many of the same questions and materials, and yet may situate these questions in the present. There is some freedom to the ways in which your photographs may take it all in, so to speak, and interpret the site, its multi-layered history and present condition. I admit that I learn a lot from your process and noting which past and present elements you choose to extract and incorporate in your work.
Abstract Horizons incorporated in the museum’s future presentation of Takht-e Soleyman
Margaret:
I, for one, am really looking forward to seeing Abstract Horizons incorporated in the museum’s future presentation of Takht-e Soleyman and the archaeological remains in Berlin. Your take on the changing nature of the landscape pairs well with the historic images of Mongol people and encampments from Berlin’s famed Diez album, a collection of drawings and paintings on paper that chronologically correspond with the ceramic remains from Takht-e Soleyman. That your photographs show loss and change through your burning process pointedly echoes the changes and loss experienced by the archaeological site over time. Its an exciting juxtaposition of contemporary and historic works of art.
About the Artist
Born in 1980, Gohar Dashti is an Iranian Artist with stations in Boston, Berlin and Tehran. Gohar earned an M.A. in photography at the Tehran University of Fine Art in 2005 and her work is held in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), and the Smithsonian (Washington, D.C.). She has also received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2024),the V&A Parasol Foundation Prize (2023), and MacDowell (2017 & 2021).
About the Curator
Also born in 1980, Margaret is an American art historian and curator at the Museum for Islamic Art in Berlin. Her scholarship focuses on the visual, material and intellectual culture of medieval and early modern Iran and Central Asia.
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