July 22, 2016
The passport seized earlier this month from Iranian-Canadian sculptor Parviz Tanavoli has been returned to him and he flew to Vancouver Monday.
At Vancouver airport, Tanavoli told reporters he still wasn’t sure why his passport had been seized two weeks earlier. But he said the brush with the law would not stop him from going back to Iran.
Tanavoli has homes and studios in both Tehran and Van-couver and passports from both countries. He has long moved back and forth between the two cities. His wife and adult children live in Vancouver.
“I have to go back – I have a studio house, I have a lot of unfinished work, I have to go back,” Tanavoli, 79, told reporters.
Tanavoli is widely regarded as Iran’s most significant modern sculptor. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and London’s Tate Modern, among others, have displayed his work, and one of his bronze sculptures sold for $2.8 million in 2008 in Dubai.
On July 2, Tanavoli prepared to fly from Tehran to London to speak about his new book, “European Women in Persian Houses,” at the British Museum. But his passport was seized at the airport without explanation. A few days later, Tanavoli went to police headquarters to try to retrieve his passport and said he was told he faced charges of “disturbing public opinion and spreading falsehoods” through his work.
Tandis Tanavoli, one of his three children, said Iranian officials told the family that someone who had a grudge against her father persuaded a police contact to detain him at the airport. When authorities reviewed the complaint, it was determined to be unfounded, the charges were dropped and the sculptor’s passport was returned, she said.
The complaint turned out to be “completely bogus” and authorities are looking into it, she said.
In Tehran, Tanavoli’s attorney, Sadreddin Mahozi gave a slightly different story. He told the Fars news agency last week the complainant told police he had bought some sculptures from Tanavoli but asserted Tanavoli had not provided all of them. Mahozi was quoted by Fars as saying the complainant and Tanavoli had agreed to have the dispute arbitrated.
Tanavoli was greeted at the airport by his wife, Manijeh, and his three children. The family had earlier planned to gather in Vancouver this month to celebrate their first arrival in the city July 22, 1989.