Becoming Words: Artist-Led Tour

Join artists Hekiun Oda and Bahman Panahi for a guided tour of Becoming Words: A Joint Calligraphy Exhibition. Rooted respectively in the Japanese tradition of Shodō and the Persian tradition of Nastaliq, their practices approach calligraphy not simply as writing, but as a living, embodied art form.

During the tour, Oda and Panahi will share the ideas, processes, and cultural traditions behind their works. Oda will discuss his use of the brushstroke as a singular meeting of breath, body, ink, and spirit, and his exploration of calligraphy as a visual language of mindfulness, peace, and human connection. Panahi will introduce his concept of Musicalligraphy, which brings calligraphy into dialogue with rhythm, sound, and music while engaging themes of love, longing, and peace.

Let's explore together what happens when a word becomes more than a symbol, when it becomes an atmosphere, a gesture, a movement, or an experience. The tour offers a rare opportunity to encounter the exhibition through the artists’ own voices and to reflect on calligraphy as a universal architecture of connection across cultures.

This exhibition and event series is made possible through a collaboration between the Seldon Institute and the Heritage Museum of Asian Art.

Franco-Iranian artist Bahman Panahi was born in 1967. He holds a Ph.D. in music and musicology, he is a visual artist, calligrapher and musician.

From his early childhood, he has been sensitive to the calligraphies that punctuated his environment. His first calligraphic gesture was in the air, tracing a line in space. At a very young age, he understood that calligraphy is a living art, where gesture is combined with rhythm in the search for balance and a consonant harmony, seeking to sublimate sentences, words and letters, whilst revealing their melodic dimension. This poetic conception led him naturally to highlight the resonances of calligraphy and music. Inspired by these two artistic practices, he has made them his vocation. From his teenage years onwards, he devoted his studies to that purpose. He was instructed by the great Iranian masters. At the age of nineteen, he began teaching calligraphy; he became not only master calligrapher but also musician.

His studies took him to France, where he deepened his research and developed the concept of Musicalligraphy in his doctoral thesis at Sorbonne University. In his work, Bahman Panahi consistently endeavoured to bring out this conceptual dimension of calligraphy.

This artistic practice, comprising both traditional and abstract calligraphic compositions, has allowed him to travel: exhibitions, concerts, artistic performances around the world, exchanges with international artists have all waymarked Bahman Panahi’s life and have lent him international prominence.

At the same time, he continues to teach calligraphy. Throughout the world, he delivers courses, runs workshops and contributes to conferences in prestigious locations. In the wake of his teaching, a school of calligraphy has formed and developed informally, gathering together the students whom he has initiated.

Hekiun Oda is a Japanese calligraphy artist whose work treats each brushstroke as a singular, unrepeatable meeting of breath, body, ink, and spirit. Rooted in the classical tradition of shodō, his practice moves beyond writing to explore calligraphy as a visual language of mindfulness, peace, and human connection.

Born and raised in Kobe, Japan, Oda began studying calligraphy at age five under master Goun Katsura. He moved to Chicago in 1990, where he has continued to share Japanese calligraphy through exhibitions, live performances, and workshops. In 2009, he founded the Oda Calligraphy Association to teach calligraphy as both an art form and a meditative practice.

Oda’s recent work explores how written language can become a universal architecture of connection. In a cross-cultural calligraphic duet with a Persian calligrapher, he brings Japanese shodō into dialogue with Persian calligraphic traditions through shared ideas of movement, emotion, ink, and emptiness. His work has been exhibited and performed at the Japanese Culture Center of Chicago, McHenry County College, and the Heritage Museum of Asian Art, among other venues.