ArtDayMe: Mojdeh Tabatabaei, Founder and Director of Mojdeh Gallery in Tehran, delivered a lecture on the renowned Iranian artist Mehdi Sahabi during the second day of the four-day congress of the French Semiotics Association, held at Université Paris Cité.

The 2026 Congress of the French Semiotics Association, held under the theme "Determination and Indeterminacy," took place at Université Paris Cité from June 17 to 20, 2026.

Centered on the topic "Semiotics Between Predictability and Unpredictability," the congress explored the relationships between meaning, certainty, ambiguity, and the possibilities of interpretation across a wide range of cultural, artistic, and social contexts.

On the second day of the congress, June 18, Mojdeh Tabatabaei, Director of Mojdeh Gallery, delivered a lecture focusing on this theme. In 2021, she published the book In Search of Meaning: A Semiotic and Semio-Semantic Analysis of Mehdi Sahabi's Visual Artworks, a landmark publication dedicated to the visual practice of Mehdi Sahabi.

The full text of her lecture follows:

My name is Mojdeh Tabatabaei, founder and director of Mojdeh Art Gallery.

I established the gallery in Tehran in 1998, and it has now been active for more than twenty-seven years. Throughout these years, our mission has been to introduce Iranian modern and contemporary art and to help preserve the legacy of Iranian artists. A longside organizing exhibitions, research has always been an important part of our work. Through publishing books and collaborating with museums and cultural institutions, we have tried to contribute to a deeper understanding of Iranian art.

One of the most important artists we have focused on in recent years is Mehdi Sahabi. He was a truly multidisciplinary artist: a translator, writer, journalist, photographer, painter, and sculptor who left a lasting mark on contemporary Iranian culture and art.

Mehdi Sahabi is also especially important because he was one of the strongest cultural bridges between Iran and France. Through his translation of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, as well as many other works of French literature, he introduced generations of Persian readers to French culture and literature. At the same time, he created a remarkable body of work in the visual arts and is considered one of the important modernist artists of Iran.

For this reason, I believe that we are gathered here today in the perfect place and at the perfect moment to celebrate and discuss his work.

In 2021, a comprehensive monograph of Mehdi Sahabi’s works was published through a collaboration between Mojdeh Gallery and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. At the same time, a retrospective exhibition of his works was organized at the museum.

During that exhibition, a series of academic talks and discussions were held to explore different aspects of Sahabi’s artistic practice and ideas. One of these sessions brought together three distinguished French semioticians Professor Jacques Fontanille, Denis Bertrand, and Ivan Darrault-Harris as well as two distinguished Iranian semioticians, Dr.Marzieh Atahari Nik-Azam and Dr.Hamidreza Shairi, whose presence we greatly miss today.

Following that meeting, and thanks to the generosity of Professors in sharing their essays with us, the idea of publishing a book emerged. Because of the importance of their theoretical approach and the strong interest shown by the audience, these contributions eventually became a book entitled In Search of Meaning

This book is among the first studies dedicated to Mehdi Sahabi’s visual works from a semiotic perspective. It was translated by Marzieh Atahari Nik-Azam and Sohrab Ahmadi and was published two years after that meeting through a collaboration between Mojdeh Art Gallery, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Mehdi Sahabi Foundation.

Today, in the third year since its publication, Mojdeh Art Gallery is proud to present and officially launch this book within the framework of the International Congress of French Semiotics.

Because semiotic approaches to visual art are still relatively new in Iran, we hope that this publication will encourage further dialogue and collaboration between researchers and cultural institutions in Iran and France. We believe it can open new paths for studying modern art through semiotic perspectives and contribute to stronger cultural and academic exchanges between our two countries.

More importantly, this event offers us an opportunity to revisit the legacy of one of Iran’s most influential cultural figures and to continue the dialogue between Iranian and French artistic and cultural traditions.

Before concluding, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the leadership of Université Paris Cité, the faculty and staff of the Department of Semiotics, the authors and translators of this book, the family of the late Mehdi Sahabi, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Mr. Sohrab Ahmadi, my colleagues at Mojdeh Art Gallery, and everyone in Iran and France who contributed to this project and helped make today's event possible.

I sincerely hope that this gathering will be the beginning of further collaborations and deeper conversations between the cultural and academic communities of Iran and France.

Thank you very much for your attention.