By Kurosh Alyani Iranian cultural critic

From the flame to Michelangelo, and from Michelangelo to the mouth harp: The struggle for human art

TEHRAN – Before the accumulation of colonial wealth and the rise of institutional gatekeeping, art existed in forms that were raw, localized, and intimately bound to lived experience. It emerged through craft, ritual, oral expression, and communal aesthetics—untethered from formal complexity or market logic.