Tehran confirms continued presence at Paris’s Cité Internationale
Aidin Mahdizadeh, Iran’s Director-General of Visual Arts at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, said on Saturday that Iranian artists remain part of the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and that Iran is actively working to restore full access there following setbacks during the COVID-19 era.
Iran has not given up on its artists’ presence at the Cité. As Mahdizadeh put it, the interruption was not deliberate but rooted in a slew of complications — from the pandemic to opaque directives, delayed cost estimates, strained Franco-Iran relations, and a procedural vacuum during previous administrations, IRNA wrote.
Negotiations launched in 2017–18 stalled when COVID struck. By 2022, Iran had formally accepted a revised residency protocol, yet “no letter exists terminating our cooperation,” he stressed.
A brief, unofficial note suggesting suspension arrived at Iran’s Paris embassy earlier this year, “but it never reached us formally”, he said, highlighting that this bypassed standard diplomatic channels and denied Iran a chance to reply. Meanwhile, the ministry has budgeted for the program and awaits formal payment terms from the French side.
Mahdizadeh outlined that a cross-institution task force—comprising the Visual Arts Directorate, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Islamic Culture and Relations Organization—has been meeting, including with Iran’s cultural attaché in France, to iron out the ambiguities on funding, processes, and dispatching artists. The coordination, he noted, must be “collective and national,” not driven by a single body.
Mahdizadeh said, “Iranian artists have not been removed from the Cité.” Instead, their re-engagement is very much underway.