Farmanfarmaian’s artistic career has spanned over five decades and straddled two cultures; with her stylistic technique, she effortlessly demonstrates how worlds conflate. Mirror Ball is simultaneously playful and poignant; a prime example of how Farmanfarmaian marries the reverence for Iranian handicraft and her heritage, alongside Western contemporaries via a life lived in the perceived pop and glitz of New York in the 70s. Mirror Ball brings together the decorative intricacies of Iranian traditional craft with the ethos of Western abstraction.

- MONIR FARMANFARMAIAN CITED IN: ROBIN WRIGHT, 'TWO IRANIAN ARTISTS AND THE REVOLUTION' IN: THE NEW YORKER, 15 SEPTEMBER 2015.

Farmanfarmaian was friendly with Warhol, as she was with Milton Avery, Louise Nevelson, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning. Following her twelve years living in New York, she maintained close relations with many of its most important artistic practitioners. A similar piece as the one on offer was gifted to Warhol by Farmanfarmaian. In the present work, we can observe as much influence from contemporary Western artists as we can from traditional Persian sources.

Her retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, New York in 2015, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Infinite Possibility. Mirror Works and Drawings, 1974-2014 featured a series of these glittering and rare mosaic balls.

An innovator and a globally celebrated artist in a postmodern world, the beauty of her works lie not in the juxtaposition of opposing worlds, but in her ability to marry them unstirred by cultural differences.