Hossein Nakhaei

“Luminous Past, Fragmented Present” examines the transformation of thirteenth and fourteenth-century Persian luster tiles from architectural elements into isolated museum artifacts following their widespread and violent removal in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To challenge the epistemological consequences of this displacement, the project repositions luster tiles within the spatial, ecological, and cultural contexts that originally gave them meaning. Drawing on an interdisciplinary approach that integrates sensory studies, new materialism, and ecocriticism—alongside scientific analysis of tiles and computer simulations of interior spaces—the research shifts the focus away from object-based interpretations toward a more spatially and historically grounded understanding that exposes their complexity. Using textual, visual, material, and architectural sources, the project explores how luster tiles shaped sacred environments and mediated devotional experience in three shrines in central Iran. This reframing contributes to more responsible and culturally sensitive approaches to the interpretation and representation of displaced material culture.