The Holy Defense Museum in Tehran, or How to Aestheticize War

In September 2013 the Iranian authorities inaugurated the Holy Defense Museum (Muzeh-i Dafa’-i Moqaddas) in the capital Tehran that also hosts a Martyrs’ Museum (Muzeh-i Shuhada) built in the early 1980s and later renovated. The new museum is part of a grandiose project to commemorate the sacrifice of Iranians during the war provoked by the Iraqi regime (1980–1988). The museum encompasses various aspects of the arts (visual, cinematic, photographic, literary, etc.) shaped to remember and celebrate the martyrs of that war. The 1979 Iranian Revolution and the following Iran-Iraq War produced an enormous amount of visual material; works produced during this crucial period that disrupted the balance of power, both regionally and internationally, constitute an important part of Iran’s recent history. Visual materials produced in that period not only constitute a collective graphic memory of those traumatic years, they also revolutionized Iranian aesthetics. The Islamic Republic of Iran (hereafter IRI) establishment has a long experience in molding contemporary art for political purposes and the Holy Defense Museum represents the zenith of this imposing project. In this paper, I present an analytic and descriptive reading of the museum in light of my direct experience visiting the museum, and I explore its role in maintaining the collective memory of the Iran-Iraq conflict, in celebrating the revolution and in aestheticizing war.