TEHRAN -- Fifty-five new sculptures will embellish Tehran for the Iranian New Year, which will begin on March 21 this year.
The sculptures have been selected from among the works that were submitted to Tehran Municipality’s Beautification Organization following a call for creating sculptures on the theme of Noruz, the celebration for the Iranian New Year, the organization announced in press release on Thursday.
A number of works have also been chosen from the submissions to the 3rd Urban Sculpture Biennial, which was held in Tehran in December 2012 and January 2013.
The organization has also assigned groups of artists to paint egg-shaped sculptures with colorful designs in some of Tehran’s parks during a two-day festival to recollect the delightful tradition of painting eggs before Noruz.
The festival will be held at the parks of Noruz, Shahr and Parvaz on March 14 and 15.
The tradition of painting eggs before Noruz has almost completely sunk into oblivion over the past few decades.
Iranian people used to paint eggs with colorful designs and to add them to the Haft Seen ritual table setting or decoration. The eggs were given to children visiting their relatives’ houses.
However, setting the Haft Seen decoration is still somewhat common among the Iranians. The Haft Seen decoration includes seven items that begin with the Persian letter “seen” which is pronounced in the same way as “s” in English. They include sib (apple), samanu (a sweet pudding made from wheat sprouts), seer (garlic), sekkeh (coins), sumac (a spice), serkeh (vinegar) and sabzeh (green sprouted seeds).
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