Whispers of Legends by Leila Eskandari - Abu Dhabi Art 2024
Mythological figures and creatures come together in fluid dreamscapes filled with vivid colours, plants, and patterns. This is the imaginary world of Iranian artist Leila Eskandari, who draws inspiration from folkloric tales to create dynamic, shifting compositions that reflect on her personal memories as well as wider human experience. Whispers of Legends, explores the power of stories to transcend temporal, geographical, and cultural boundaries.
For this latest series of paintings, Eskandari looks specifically to the ’Shahnameh,’ or the Book of Kings, an epic poem completed by the Persian writer Abolqasem Ferdowsi in the early 11th century. Consisting of more than 50,000 rhyming couplets, the ’Shahnameh’ serves as a compendium of Iranian myths, legends, and historical episodes and has fascinated Eskandari since childhood. ‘Everywhere I have ventured, I have endeavored to forge connections between the spaces and characters from those tales and the environment that surrounds me,’ she says. In other words, the stories have shaped her perspective of the world, just as myths across all cultures have helped civilizations for centuries to make sense of nature, the cosmos, and human existence.
For this latest series of paintings, Eskandari looks specifically to the ’Shahnameh,’ or the Book of Kings, an epic poem completed by the Persian writer Abolqasem Ferdowsi in the early 11th century. Consisting of more than 50,000 rhyming couplets, the ’Shahnameh’ serves as a compendium of Iranian myths, legends, and historical episodes and has fascinated Eskandari since childhood. ‘Everywhere I have ventured, I have endeavored to forge connections between the spaces and characters from those tales and the environment that surrounds me,’ she says. In other words, the stories have shaped her perspective of the world, just as myths across all cultures have helped civilizations for centuries to make sense of nature, the cosmos, and human existence.
