The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin is simultaneously the burial place of a ninth-century saint (Yahya), a destination for ziyarat (pious visitation), a neighborhood community center and cemetery, an architectural monument of Iran’s Ilkhanid period (1265-1353), a cultural heritage and tourism site, and an ‘object’ on display in over fifty museums worldwide via its displaced luster tiles.
Since 2021, I have been directing an interdisciplinary scientific project devoted to the shrine. Unlike many exhibitions, The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin: An Online Exhibition of a Living Iranian Shrine is not an institutional project generated and produced by a university or museum. Rather, it is an independent, grassroots, non-profit, and non-political initiative that seeks to transcend certain institutional confines and bridge many divides in scholarship, access, and perspective.
The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin: An Online Exhibition of a Living Iranian Shrine is an alternative museological space that explores the shrine’s many looks, functions, resonances, users, and stories over the last eight hundred years. The website is an online exhibition, exhibition catalog (book), and independent publishing house in one, showcasing the work of over 30 contributors. It aims to be partially bilingual (English-Persian, also some French) and will be available for free to anyone with internet.
Since 2023, the project has been supported by a mix of charitable and academic grants: Khamseen (University of Michigan), Persian Heritage Foundation, ARIA (University of Michigan; part of a Khamseen application), and Gingko. My related research has been supported by residential fellowships at the Getty Research Institute (2021) and Institut national d’histoire de l’art (2024).
The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin: An Online Exhibition of a Living Iranian Shrine is the inaugural production of 33 Arches, which is responsible for all content and creation.
The host of the exhibition is Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online. We will have our own independent website within Khamseen’s Projects page.
Coming this fall.
