AB-ANBAR is an independent contemporary art gallery, which serves as a nurturing incubator that engages non-linear histories of art and history. Often diasporic, AB-ANBAR represents artists, and develops projects with artistic voices from multiple latitudes who embody multiple forms of identity. AB-ANBAR’s exhibitions and programmes present artists who traverse the aesthetic and political, as well as social and psychological borders. 

AB-ANBAR initially opened in 2014 in Tehran, Iran. The gallery is a conceptual representation of its name which means a water reservoir in Farsi. The word is made of two parts: ab meaning water and anbar meaning a reservoir. Thus, AB-ANBAR as a gallery is the architectural expression of a physical space that shapes malleable content that nurtures life and guarantees growth. The space, through its solidity and form, brings to sight a fluid force we call art.

Since its inception, the gallery has presented many exhibitions and also hosted and collaborated with a rotating group of cultural tenants, not-for-profits, independent publishers, musicians, and performers, fashioning a year-long programme of wide-reaching cultural engagement. 

2020 marks the beginning of AB-ANBAR’s presence in London, UK. With its new permanent space opening in London’s historical Fitzrovia, the gallery intends to expand the dialogue between artists, collectors, museums and curators towards an inclusion and understanding of marginalised realities.