From Non-Places to Anthropological Space: The Transformative Practice of Firouz FarmanFarmaian

Federico Fellini's Casanova (1976) opens on an extravagant, phantasmagoric vision of Venice—a Venice of the imagination, deliberately artificial in its geography. Fellini's titular Casanova is portrayed as a man constantly in motion yet curiously empty. At one point, Giacomo Casanova declares: ‘You travel in lands that don't exist. I prefer to travel in the real world.’¹ This dismissal of imaginary voyages encapsulates Fellini's cynical view of his protagonist. Though Casanova roamed across Europe, Fellini describes him as having ‘traveled throughout the entire world’ only for it to be 'as if he never got out of bed'—a rootless libertine who represents 'nothingness, universality without meaning'.² In Fellini's hands, Casanova's relentless travel becomes an exercise in futility, a life of movement without deeper connection or identity.

By contrast, contemporary artist Firouz FarmanFarmaian embraces the idea of voyaging through 'lands that don't exist' as a liberating creative act. His exhibition Voyage in Inexistent Land, explicitly taking its title from that very line in Fellini's Casanova, transforms the film's ironic reproach into an invitation.³ Staged in Palazzo Dandolo as the We R The Nomads Pavilion in Venice, the show represents what FarmanFarmaian describes as the product of an 'unlikely dialogue' between two places and modes of being.⁴ After representing Kyrgyzstan at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, the Iranian-born artist established a studio in Essaouira, Morocco, consciously linking the Moroccan port city and Venice as twin wellsprings of his practice.

The significance of this Venice-Morocco dialogue is further illuminated by FarmanFarmaian's 2025 docufilm PATH, which documents his groundbreaking representation of Kyrgyzstan at the 59th Venice Biennale—the first Kyrgyz pavilion in the Biennale's history. The film captures what he describes as the 'turbulent yet inspiring journey' of bringing nomadic Central Asian traditions into dialogue with the prestigious Venice art world, revealing the 'gritty realities' and uncertainties beneath the romantic vision of cross-cultural artistic practice. PATH's structure itself—blurring 'eastern mythical storytelling and western narrative structures'⁵—mirrors the hybrid aesthetic approach that would later culminate in Voyage in Inexistent Land.

The Nomadic Condition

Travel and displacement are not merely themes in FarmanFarmaian's work but lived realities that shape his artistic vision. Born in Tehran in 1973 into an aristocratic Persian lineage, he was exiled as a child following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, becoming part of the great post-revolution diaspora.⁶ Though he eventually settled in Europe, FarmanFarmaian pointedly considers himself 'stateless.' As a descendant of the Qajar dynasty—a once-nomadic Turkic tribe that ruled Iran—he carries a cultural memory of tribal nomadism and self-identifies as a modern nomad.

This personal history of displacement informs his interdisciplinary practice spanning painting, textile weaving, film, music, and design. His recent series Nomads of Persia delved into the rich traditions of the Bakhtiari and Qashqai nomadic tribes in Iran, drawing explicit parallels between their contemporary instability and the artist's own experience of exile.⁷ Rather than treating displacement as a wound to be healed, FarmanFarmaian transforms rootlessness into a creative ethos.

From Cultural Research to Imaginative Exploration

Voyage in Inexistent Land marks a pivotal shift in FarmanFarmaian's artistic trajectory. The exhibition represents what he describes as 'an ethereal leap into the realm of imaginative exploration'.⁸ This transition from ethnographic documentation to fantastical introspection reflects a broader movement in his practice toward what he calls a 'post-tribal' vision—a way of 'rehabilitating tribal tradition and worldview back into contemporary discourse'.⁹

The artist's methodology embodies this post-tribal approach through his practice of establishing studios in diverse locations and sourcing materials from each for his installations. His movement between Venice and Essaouira, gathering materials from both contexts, enacts a kind of perpetual migration within his creative process.

Myth, Memory and Imagined Geographies

Voyage in Inexistent Land 'delves into themes of magic, myth, and the boundaries of reality' while marking FarmanFarmaian's 'return to painting and abstraction', inviting viewers to explore 'imagined landscapes that challenge cultural memory'¹⁰ and suggesting a reflexive commentary on memory in an increasingly transient world. FarmanFarmaian’s installation evokes fragments of collective pasts—hints of Persian lore, Venetian legends, or nomadic myths—yet purposefully blurring and reassembling them into new, imagined geographies.

FarmanFarmaian describes the exhibition poetically as 'an ethereal realm where the tangible meets the intangible', a space that 'whispers of lost wonders and forgotten reveries,' beckoning viewers to 'reclaim the shimmering echoes of our collective memory'.¹¹ These words conjure an almost cinematic experience, transforming the gallery into a liminal zone between worlds real and imagined—a nomadic campsite for the mind.

Non-Places and Anthropological Space

FarmanFarmaian’s artistic vision resonates strongly with contemporary discourse on travel and what anthropologist Marc Augé terms 'non-places'. Augé defines non-lieux as spaces of transience that proliferate in supermodern life—airport terminals, motorway rest stops, chain hotels—which 'do not hold enough significance to be regarded as 'places''. Unlike anthropological places that are relational, historical, and identity-forming, non-places are generic sites of transit where individuals remain anonymous and social bonds are fleeting.¹²

As a frequent traveler navigating such non-places, FarmanFarmaian responds by injecting meaning and memory wherever he lands. Rather than succumb to the nowhere-ness of contemporary travel, he gathers the specific stories and materials of each locale and incorporates them into his art. Voyage in Inexistent Land thus creates an anthropological place out of transience—a symbolic home for the cultural baggage accumulated on the road. Tellingly, the exhibition is housed in the temporary We R The Nomads Pavilion, suggesting a roaming, ephemeral identity not tied to any single nation—essentially a curated non-place.

The Romance of Statelessness

Philosopher Emil Cioran observed: 'Our epoch will be marked by the romanticism of the stateless. Already apparent is the image of a universe in which no one will have droit de cité. Inside every citizen nowadays lies a future alien.'¹⁴ These words foresee a world where dislocation becomes the norm, where everyone becomes a stranger everywhere, belonging nowhere.

This 'romanticism of the stateless' captures something essential about FarmanFarmaian's project. His art finds genuine romance in the condition of exile, transforming displacement into a source of creativity and self-discovery. By roaming from Iran to France to Morocco to Kyrgyzstan and beyond, he has accumulated a cosmopolitan mélange of influences alongside the psychological burden of never fully belonging.

Voyage in Inexistent Land can be read as a meditation on this 21st-century reality. The land we travel to in the exhibition is 'inexistent' not only because it represents fantasy, but because for the stateless individual, no land is fully home. In lieu of a physical homeland, FarmanFarmaian constructs a mental and aesthetic homeland—a patchwork of memories, myths, and motifs from many places, woven into an artistic refuge.

Beyond the Romantic Veil

Yet this nomadic romanticism is not without its tensions. By invoking myth and magic, FarmanFarmaian hints at the potentially illusory nature of our nostalgic visions of belonging. His references to 'forgotten reveries' and 'lost wonders' acknowledge that much cultural memory is fragmentary, perhaps even irretrievable. The non-places of the modern world threaten to erode these specific memories, and the artist's response—fabricating an artistic non-place brimming with symbolic content—raises important questions.

Does aestheticizing exile risk glossing over its genuine hardships? The exhibition's beauty, its 'shimmering echoes' of memory, could be seen as a romantic veil draped over real histories of violence and upheaval—from the Iranian Revolution that expelled his family to the disruption of nomadic life across Central Asia. A critical reading might ask whether Voyage in Inexistent Land functions as escapist fantasy, nostalgic elegy, or subtle commentary on contemporary placelessness. Perhaps it operates as all three simultaneously.

A Movement with Meaning

Ultimately, Voyage in Inexistent Land represents Firouz FarmanFarmaian's personal response to Casanova's cynicism. Where Fellini's protagonist ends his days estranged and lamenting lost youth, FarmanFarmaian approaches statelessness as a source of narrative possibility. The exhibition becomes a temporary caravanserai where tales from Venice, Essaouira, Tehran, and the Kyrgyz steppe commingle.

In this space, travel transcends the hollow pursuit of physical destinations that Casanova critiques. Instead, it becomes a journey through layers of meaning, inviting viewers to travel not only physically to Venice but mentally into an amalgamated territory of culture and imagination. Where Fellini's skeptic suggests that Casanova's adventures ultimately lead nowhere, FarmanFarmaian's odyssey seeks to map out a new form of belonging beyond borders.

FarmanFarmaian's work suggests that the only way forward is to become a nomad of the mind, carrying one's home within—even if that home exists only in an 'inexistent' land woven from memory and desire. This vision transforms the condition of contemporary displacement from a source of alienation into a foundation for creative possibility, offering not escape from our rootless present but a more meaningful way of inhabiting it.