Outside the quiet, rural hamlet of Garrison, in Upstate New York’s Hudson Valley, the early 19th-century clapboard home of Iranian-American artist Y.Z. Kami reveals a cache of deeply personal objects. Chief among them is a masterfully woven silk Persian rug, richly red, given to him by his mother. Others clustered on surfaces include a silver-framed photograph of his parents, honeymooning in Rome, and a small collection of ceramic vessels. “In the very old Persian pottery I have, I see the dryness of the land and the different colors of the earth from the part of the world where I come from,” he says. 

At a time when Iran is dominating headlines and Kami, 69, is about to open a major solo show at Gagosian gallery in Los Angeles, his relationship to his childhood home of Tehran is being drawn deeper into a politically complex conversation. But it is one that exists outside his approach to making art, which is philosophical and contemplative, exploring notions of selfhood and spiritualism. Today, “my relationship [to Iran] is primarily through language, especially the language of Persian poetry,” he says, citing 13th and 14th-century poets Rumi and Hafez.

The country’s rich cultural heritage is a powerful influence on his work — from Persian architectural motifs, which inspire his abstract and esoteric Dome paintings, to the portraiture by his artist mother, examples of which are dotted around Kami’s home. Outside the house, a courtyard garden of haphazard paving stones, designed by Kami and Daniele, is thick with creeping thyme; one flagstone marks the tomb of a beloved cat, the name Pishoucheh (meaning “little kitty” in Persian) hand carved by Kami, edging on to the vast rolling lawn. 

Kami was born Kamran Youssefzadeh. His father was a businessman; his mother “had a studio at our house, where I grew up in Tehran”, he recalls. “She was of that tradition of Persian painters at the end of the 19th century who brought the techniques of Old Masters back from Europe to Iran.” His earliest memory of her is an olfactory one — “the smell of linseed oil mixed with paint”, he says. “It’s my madeleine.”

He decided to leave Iran to study — first in the US, at the University of California, Berkeley, then in Paris. “I studied philosophy at the Sorbonne,” he says, dressed in jeans and a shirt, his manner open, his voice soft yet animated. “It was the end of the 1970s and early 1980s, and Paris was very alive in the humanities. It was the time of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes.” The life of an artist still called, though, and he began merging his philosophy training with his painterly upbringing, developing a quietly thought-provoking style. 

On a trip to New York in the mid-1980s he fell in love with the city — “its energy, the galleries, the work being made there — and there’s a very special light in New York”, he says. He moved, then snappily shortened his name — inspired by the monikers of poets such as TS Eliot and CP Cavafy.