A piece of art by Iranian artist Golnaz Fathi. [Courtesy of Golnaz Fathi/Provided to China Daily]

Part of the wave of Iranian artists enjoying increasing international recognition, Golnaz Fathi has turned a childhood passion into a highly individual art form. She became fascinated by calligraphy when she was growing up in Tehran and reached the very top of the craft when she graduated from the Iranian Society of Calligraphy in Tehran in 1996 after six years of study. She then turned to her first love, art, and has developed her own unique style, which incorporates her mastery of calligraphy.

Speaking from her Tehran apartment, where the walls are adorned with her distinctive paintings, Fathi explains the progression of her art. "As the years have passed, my work has become pure abstract – I am a choreographer and these are my dancers," she says, referring to the calligraphy characters. She uses two contrasting techniques – one with acrylic paint and brush, which she says is similar to the "action painting" pioneered by the American abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, and another with a very fine pen that produces a result of layers of hundreds and hundreds of lines.

Fathi's first solo exhibition in Mainland China was at the Pearl Lam Galleries Shanghai in 2013, when she and renowned Chinese calligrapher Wang Dongling created new works in a joint "art performance". Although they could only exchange limited words in English, the artistic bond proved to be more than an adequate substitute for verbal communication – Wang has his own abstract style of what he dubs "calligraphic painting".