Meet the
Urban Sufi
Darvish Fakhr paints in the morning, moves in the afternoon, and finishes the canvas at dusk. On Brighton's seafront he whirls, skates and floats through crowds, a slow, gentle disruption of what we expect from each other in public.
"It's less about dancing in the room and more about dancing with the room."
Darvish FakhrA painter who moves
Darvish is a UK-based Iranian-American artist who combines painting and performance to challenge assumptions about multiculturalism, cross-pollinating his Iranian heritage with his Western upbringing. As the Urban Sufi, he stages gentle civic disruptions, some planned and some spontaneous, inspired by the practice and image of the whirling dervish.
Across all of it he fuses Western technique with Eastern philosophy: Persian poetry worked into oil paintings, a skateboard converted into a flying carpet.
"I studied painting in Boston, then continued my studies in London. My mother is originally from Brighton, so after I finished my studies I came to live here. It suits my temperament. It has a very strong creative energy with changeable weather patterns; ideas and objects are always flying around here."
- 1969Born. Grew up in the United States; Iranian father.
- 1994BFA, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- 1997MFA, Slade School of Fine Art, London
- 2004BP Travel Award, National Portrait Gallery. He used it to paint people in Tehran and Isfahan.Shortlisted for BP awards 1998–2007
- 2008Nine-panel portrait of the dancer Akram Khan, now in the National Portrait Gallery collection
The town as canvas
The images that made the Urban Sufi recognisable are made with the Brighton photographer Hugh Fox, whom we also interviewed. Their series, The Lightness of Being, catches Darvish suspended mid-air: leaping, skating, floating on a carpet. According to the artist's website, none of it is edited or made with AI.
"There is a certain quality of suspension, or lightness, that we look for in our work together. It's not premeditated. We get together and look around and the world becomes our playground, the town our canvas. I'm pretty sure I became an artist so I could get away with things I could not if I were a kid."
In his own words
Tell us about your creative process.
It's very physical. It includes a lot of movement work, which I use to access my paintings. I start the morning very productively, putting a lot of marks and colours on the canvas, but roughly, an approximation of what I want. After a few hours I put the brushes down and put my music on. I move my body to the music in waves, shakes and stutters. By doing this I get a clear idea of where I am locking up, then I stop and attend to those areas.
I have a lot of inventions at the studio to release fascia and target inflammation in my body, the result of injury or repetition. This kind of work takes time, though, and needs to be sipped like tea. Toward the end of the day I turn my easel back around and see the painting with fresh eyes. Because of all the flow work beforehand, I can finish the work efficiently, with the directness and honesty I seek in all that I do.
You call your paintings Sufi Vandalism, marking them with text and abrasions. Is that destroying, or creating something new?
It's both. Destruction has always been a part of creation. The three Hindu gods of creation include Shiva, god of destruction. Even painting on a pure white canvas could be seen as a form of destruction.
My studio caught fire some ten years ago and my work was partially destroyed (yet somehow improved). Since then, destruction has been a big part of my practice. There is a flower in California that only blooms after the devastation of a forest fire, Baker's globe mallow. Death and destruction get glossed over a lot in the West. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold to make it more beautiful.
"It's exciting to take something precious and roll the dice on it."
I enjoy the adrenaline. It's like throwing myself high into the air just to see how I may land.
What do you hope people take from these gentle civic disruptions?
It's about making the road of expression wider for everyone. I am offering different modes of behaviour, movements and pace. It's not about dancing, it's more about finding the essence of the moment. I try to ride inside the music rather than on top of it, and to incorporate the things around me. That's the hope: to be creative with everything and everyone around us as a statement of joy and tolerance.
It feels like surfing, because I have to be aware of the waves around me. I don't want others to feel threatened or angry, but I do want to expand the parameters of social norms. I've discovered that by moving very slowly, I am not only mindful and unthreatening, but I can conserve my energy and move for hours. Some people think I'm on drugs and oblivious to my surroundings, but it's very much the opposite. I'm trying to match the frequencies of my surroundings, like a surfer paddling to match the speed of an oncoming wave.
Do painting and movement inform one another?
Definitely. Through painting I discover nature's rhythms, which then enter my movement practice. Through movement I find joy and play, which then enters my painting.
Your inspirations and influences?
Although I am not a formally trained Sufi, I find a lot of inspiration in Sufism. Its main precept is love and tolerance, and Sufis use movement practice to connect to the divine. My parents must have known my path when they named me Darvish, the Persian word for dervish, as in the whirling dervishes.
I get a lot of inspiration from extreme sports. There is a presence required in doing dangerous things. If I zone out while riding a wave or skiing down a rock face, the consequences could be deadly. It teaches me to be present in a similar way to my meditation practice.
My influences used to be classical painters like Velázquez and Manet. They showed me how to paint form and use it as a language of expression. Lately, though, I've been studying the flight patterns of starlings. In my town they fly over the sea in large groups that morph into waves and shapes. They're mesmerising, and they teach me a lot.
What does wellbeing mean to you?
"Putting on my roller skates, playing my music and floating through a crowd of people on smooth concrete."
I practise this every day by the sea.
What's next?
I'm excited about my new charcoal drawings of the deserts of Iran. The forms are made of Farsi calligraphy from Sufi poems that weave in and out of the rock formations. Persian poetry comes from an oral tradition, and when you are there you can hear it in the wind, see it in the land and feel it in the people. I'm drawn by deserts, and vice versa.
Traveling light
Balloons, bubbles and flying carpets keep turning up in Darvish's work. In a later interview with Khemena Ahmad for Gulf News' The Kurator, he traced them back to childhood, and to Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon: "I was an only child and related to the main character, a young Parisian boy who made friends with a red balloon."
He also told the story of driving to his aunt's funeral in Plymouth with around a hundred helium balloons. It was pouring, so he inflated them in the back of his mother's car, then found himself tangled in string and trapped: open the boot and they'd all fly away. He missed the funeral and released the balloons at the gathering afterwards. He called it a lesson in "how I tend to fill my head with ideas to the point of being paralyzed."
"In actuality, we are all flying through space, spinning on a small rock and moving at over 1000 mph. A kind of liberation comes from 'letting go' of permanence, a celebration in Traveling Light."
Quotes in this section are from Gulf News / The Kurator (2022), not from our interview.
Since we spoke
The Urban Sufi has moved from the seafront into the gallery, mostly with Leila Heller Gallery, which has given him solo shows in Dubai and New York. The timeline below is from the artist's own website.
- 2022Traveling Light, solo showLeila Heller Gallery, Dubai
- 2025Between States, solo showLeila Heller Gallery, New York
- 2025Art DubaiDubai
- 2026Enrapture, solo showLeila Heller Gallery, Dubai
In our interview he was about to start charcoal drawings of Iran's deserts, built from the calligraphy of Sufi poems. We haven't been able to confirm where those drawings were shown. If you saw them, tell us.
Who is the Urban Sufi?
The persona of Darvish Fakhr, an Iranian-American painter and movement artist born in 1969 and based in Brighton, UK. As the Urban Sufi he makes slow, improvised public performances inspired by the whirling dervish, which he calls gentle civic disruptions.
What is Sufi Vandalism?
His term for marking and abrading his own finished paintings with text and scratches. He sees it as both destruction and creation, a practice that grew after a studio fire partially destroyed his work.
Who photographs his performances?
The Brighton photographer Hugh Fox. Their series The Lightness of Being stages gravity-defying moments in the town without digital editing or AI.
Where did Darvish Fakhr study?
At the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (BFA, 1994) and the Slade School of Fine Art, London (MFA, 1997). He won the National Portrait Gallery's BP Travel Award in 2004.
Portrait courtesy of the artist. Seafront photograph by Hugh Fox (@mrhughfox). Original interview: Leila Antakly. Balloon quotes from Gulf News / The Kurator, credited in the text. Biographical dates from darvish.com and the National Portrait Gallery. Revisited for Antakly Projects, 2026.
