TEHRAN — Uzbek artist 
Akmal Nur, president of the Academy of Arts of Uzbekistan, says his paintings seek to explore the space between physical reality and inner experience, drawing on Sufi philosophy and traditional Eastern symbolism to examine themes of memory, love and the human search for transcendence.
Speaking about a selection of his works currently featured by Iran’s Academy of Arts, Nur said his artistic practice is concerned less with representing the visible world than with revealing emotional and spiritual states.
“My art takes shape in the space between what is visible and what is hidden, between the material reality of the human body and its inner, spiritual experience,” he said.
The artist said recurring motifs such as apples, pomegranates, birds, trees, gardens and the female figure are not intended to reproduce traditional symbolism literally, but to give familiar forms new meaning for contemporary audiences.
“What occupies me more than representing the outside world is revealing conditions that lie beyond form and appearance—silence, longing, love, solitude, memory and humanity’s desire for the absolute,” he said.
Nur described the human figure in his paintings as existing outside a specific time or place, becoming “the embodiment of an inner condition” rather than the portrait of an individual. Faces may disappear, bodies become symbols and ordinary objects acquire metaphysical significance, he said.