Kour Pour: Cosmic Diagrams at the Aga Khan Museum

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Kour Pour, “Star Map,” 2023, acrylic on canvas over panel, 84" x 60" (courtesy of the Aga Khan Museum)

A 13th-century text on cosmography by al-Qazvini glows beside a 16th-century Chinese porcelain dish with Arabic calligraphy and an 18th-century Kashmiri mirror with glass from 17th-century Italy.

Among these objects from across Asia and the Mediterranean, Kour Pour’s large-format Cosmic Diagrams radiate in mystical blues.

Three paintings by the Los Angeles-based British-Iranian artist draw on the forms and symbolism of Persian carpets, astrology, zodiac wheels, and new age imagery, making visible the inter- and transcultural exchange that informs the way we story the cosmos and contemporary spiritual practices. 

Pour’s exhibition Cosmic Diagrams is on view at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto until February 2026.

In the first of these rug-size works, Star Map, the western zodiac wheel is instantly recognizable with its 12 spheres representing each of the astrological signs. I searched for my Aquarian and Sagittarian symbols but could only decipher Pisces’ twin fish among the twelve. The archer representing Sagittarius is placed neatly in the top left corner of the first concentric rectangle, so that the fire sign’s qualities of big-picture thinking, adventure, and directness preside over the lively tapestry, while Leo’s lion guards the bottom right corner.

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Kour Pour, “Frequent Flyers,” 2023, acrylic on canvas over panel, 84" x 60" (courtesy of the Aga Khan Museum)

Pour’s paintings are intricately layered. Star Map is dappled with floral fretwork, exhibiting a unique synthesis of printing techniques and painting that creates a sense of texture and opacity across all works, so that the familiar is also deeply personal and particular to both the beholder and the artist. 

Many eight-pointed stars recur across paintings. I associate them with The Star card in the Rider-Waite Tarot deck illustrated by Pamela Colman-Smith, but they are placed alongside other elements such as what looks to be a banjo and a googly-eyed crab whose mouth resembles a kitty from the 1977 Japanese horror film, Hausu. 

What emerges is an international mythology befitting the time- and space-crossing cartographies of astronomy, astrology, and pop culture. 

The heavily textured work of Star Map finds resonance in Cosmic Companions, which draws on another zodiac wheel: the Chinese lunar calendar. Likewise organized in twelve spheres, animals such as the tiger, rat, and rooster harken the various years associated with them. This painting has much cleaner lines than Star Map and also features several abstract elements like shells, triangles, and other geometric shapes adorning the borders.

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Kour Pour, “Cosmic Companions,” 2023, acrylic on canvas over panel, 84" x 60" (courtesy of the Aga Khan Museum)

Frequent Flyers is placed between Star Map and Cosmic Companions. It eschews the mandalas and zodiac wheels of the former paintings so that the central rectangle is inhabited by glorious mythical beasts with wings. East Asian dragons share the landscape with simurghs and griffins. Sprinkled across the canvas are crystals, koi fish, lanterns and clouds reminiscent of the scroll-type cumuli commonly found in Persian miniature paintings.

In recent years it has become convenient to draw correlations between an artist’s work and representations of the cultures to which they belong, but Cosmic Diagrams prevents such simplification. 

Instead, Pour challenges us to embrace the multi-layered complexity of our heritages so that when one witnesses surrounding objects such as a 13th-century Mesopotamian jug inscribed with zodiac signs and a Moorish treatise on geography entitled One Hundred and One Nights, the entangled pathways of art are an inevitable generosity. ■

Kour Pour, Cosmic Diagrams, is on view at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto until February 2026.

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