With the red wooden screen Fāsel 2022, Abolfazl Harouni invites visitors to step into the space of a Persian miniature painting. Harouni’s design is taken from an illustration in the Shāhnāma (The Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp (1524–76), by Abu’l Qasim Firdausi (c.940/41–1020), where a red screen separates the different pictorial spaces of the garden from constructed spaces. Yet the screen’s permeability is a reminder that one element does not exist without the other.

Fāsel serves a similar function in the Asia Pacific Triennial. In front of the red screen, the artist places Imperfect Perfection 2020, a silk carpet depicting a paradaida (paradise, or walled garden). Behind Fāsel, he displays the abstract painting Silver Howz 2024 and the representational painting Archive 2024. Like the Shāhnāma miniature painters before him, Harouni places nature and human creations in dialogue.