Questions On is the video interview format created by C41. It consists of three simple questions addressed to our network of friends, partners and creative minds. This episode features Nina Yashar the founder of the Nilufar Gallery in Milan. Discovering, Crossing, Creating. Nina Yashar believes in valuing design to tell stories. She founded Nilufar Gallery in Milan in 1979. Originally located in via Bigli and specialized in antique carpets, a passion she inherited from her Iranian parents. By the end of the Nineties, the Gallery, now located in via della Spiga, ventured into modern and contemporary furniture, showcasing the work of midcentury masters alongside unusual carpets, cutting-edge furniture and emerging designers’ pieces.

You often call yourself an explorer, how have your origins influenced your work? In the beginning there were carpets and then came design, what was your path?

Hello, my name is Nina Yashar. I was born in Tehran and I am the founder of the Nilufar Gallery, which specialises in historical, contemporary and avant-garde design. I have been Milanese since I was 5 years old, thanks to the foresight of my family and my father, who had visited Europe in the 1960s and had chosen Italy as the country best suited to the customs, spontaneity and hospitality of Persia. When I was 21, I talked to my father and decided to open my own gallery. My father’s main activity in his atelier was dealing in antique and modern oriental carpets. With careful selection, at the age of 21, I was able to open my own gallery in via Bigli – the first location. After twelve years, the gallery was moved to via della Spiga. I began my activity by making a very narrow selection of very important antique carpets – a selection drawn from my father’s activity and atelier. Once I moved to via Spiga, I was already dealing in Scandinavian design, and via Spiga became the incubator and the basin that gave me the opportunity to start carrying out my set designs and the contaminations between the oriental world and the western world, between historical, mid-century and Scandinavian design, because at that time I was dealing in mid-century Scandinavian design, which therefore became a space for me to express spontaneously all the contaminations that I loved. Clearly, my oriental culture has extremely shaped my way of seeing, my way of working and my creativity, and has allowed me to range over completely different and opposite geographical areas – from China, to Japan, to Tibet, to mid-century American and French design. The idea of having this space in via Spiga was just the beginning of being able to express all this in a fluid way.

In recent years, with the closure of museums and galleries, the way of making art has changed. What do you think about the new virtual exhibitions? How did you approach the exhibition of the young designer Audrey Large?

I believe that today it is possible to look to the future, to the design vision and the creative vision, not to mention the giant steps that technology has made in recent times. In fact, it is thanks to technology that many projects can now exist and be expressed. And this is the case of the Scale to Infinity project by Audrey Large, a very young French designer, who has created hybrids between the virtual and real worlds using the technique of 3D modelling and printing, associated with this bioplastic material – PLA – creating these paradoxical worlds – these paradoxical images – through the technique of digital. I really love the narrative of his project because I think it is both baroque and hyper-contemporary at the same time.

What will be the new trends?

Now in the world of collective design, even more than before, it is impossible to ignore the digital, which is such a vast world. We all need to create involvement at a distance, especially after all the isolation and distancing we have been through. So we need to create pathos and emotion through content and storytelling, and we need to find all the ways to grab the attention of our collectors. Indeed, all art and design galleries are increasingly focused on expanding their expression and their way of communicating through the digital world. It is no coincidence that the latest trend and the latest attempt to turn everything real into virtual is the NFT, which is an extremely innovative system, which I love very much, because it creates the possibility of certifying the pieces and also gives the possibility of the final traceability of the pieces. I myself am currently involved, I am studying this phenomenon, because there is probably a good chance that I too will embrace and consider this contemporary high-tech tool.

Credits:

Featuring: Nina Yashar
Special thanks to Nilufar Gallery

Curated by Alice De Santis
Editor: Alice De Santis
Visual: C41.eu