TEHRAN – The 29th edition of the 100 Works, 100 Artists Exhibition will go online this year again as Covid-19 cases hit record highs in Iran, the organizer of the annual event said on Sunday.

A total of 495 artworks by 489 artists will be showcased during an online exhibition, which will be organized by Golestan Gallery in Tehran from August 6 to September 8, Lili Golestan announced in a press release.

“I have missed my gallery badly, especially for its Friday openings,” said Golestan, who has organized all the gallery’s exhibitions over the past year online due to the pandemic.

“But what should we do? We have to avoid any gatherings so that conditions will improve,” she added.

Most of the artworks submitted to the exhibition are from young artists from Tehran, Isfahan, Mashhad and Shiraz, she said.

Golestan noted that she has been very selective about choosing the artworks for the exhibition, and added, “Very beautiful and really good artworks for all tastes have been selected for the exhibition as there was no size limit for the artworks this year.”

She said that the works are on sale at reasonable prices, some works were excluded from the exhibit as their artists did not agree to lower their prices.  

Earlier in April, Golestan said that her gallery quickly adapted to survive over the one-year-plus pandemic despite her preconception about virtual art showcases.

“Online exhibitions caused an increase in the number of Golestan Gallery’s customers,” she added.

Following the detection of the first cases of the COVID-19 infection in the country in February 2020, Golestan canceled all its exhibits for about four months.

“The online exhibitions really went well and were quite successful,” Golestan stated and added, “We even had customers from among Iranian expatriates living in Ireland, England, Germany, Japan, the U.S., France and Denmark, and it was amazing for me that those people who could not visit our exhibitions before were able to purchase artworks from our showcases.”  

Nearly 95 percent of the customers were first-time artwork buyers of Golestan Gallery, which sent the purchased artworks to buyers free of charge. 

She said that some artists were in doubt about putting their artworks on display on an online exhibition. However, the results were entirely satisfactory for them.

She said while the pandemic has caused enormous problems for many artists and ordinary people, she has experienced her most successful year of her career over the 32-year history of her gallery.

Photo: Art aficionados visit the 100 Works, 100 Artists Exhibition at Tehran’s Golestan Gallery on August 3, 2018. (Honaronline/Maryam Ramezanlu)

MMS/YAW