"Parallel Circuit[s]": Group Presentation

Reza Aramesh (b. 1970, Iran) focuses on photography and sculpture. He currently lives and works in London, a city he moved to at the age of 15. He received his MFA from Goldsmiths University, London (1997).

Working in photography, sculpture, video, and performance, Reza Aramesh’s understanding of the history of art, film, and literature is ever-present in his artwork. As a commentary on war reportage, for example, Aramesh takes images of violence appearing in newspapers, online articles, and social media out of their original context to explore the narratives of representation and iconography of subjected body apropos race, class, and sexuality. His work, as such, is a critical engagement with Western art history. 

He represented Iran at the 56th Edition of the Venice Biennale and has exhibited worldwide including the UK, France, China, USA, Dubai, and Iran. He has orchestrated several performances and exhibitions in institutions including the Barbican Centre, Tate Britain, and ICA, London. Other projects have been staged in public squares, nightclubs, and industrial warehouses.

Andisheh Avini (b. 1974, New York) is an artist who uses painting, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture, often incorporating the traditional craft of marquetry in his artistic practice.

Andisheh Avini explores the duality of his own identity by combining iconic images like Persian calligraphy, decorative motifs, and portraiture with occidental concepts of minimalism and abstraction. Avini's approach speaks to a larger globalized society of nomads, the displaced, and the wayfarer, reflecting a contemporary multicultural experience to which many can relate.

Fereydoun Ave (b. 1945, Tehran, Iran) is an influential figure in Iranian contemporary art. He received his BA in Applied Arts for Theatre from Arizona State University (1964), studied Film at New York University (1969), and attended the University of Seven Seas (aka Semester at Sea, 1964). Over the past five decades, he has taken on many roles as an artist, designer, art director, collector, curator, gallerist, and art patron.

The art of Fereydoun Ave is a freehanded engagement with a personal ethos informed by more prominent cultural influences. He ceaselessly reflects on his relationship with age, myths, plants, elements, seasons, moods, and heredity. He takes inspiration from the art of Iran, which tends to use the entire canvas surface, and the Western penchant for minimalism, which leaves large swaths unattended. Fereydoun Ave's joint projects with artists, galleries (including Dastan), and institutions are an integral part of his practice, reflecting his role as a curator, gallerist, and collector.

Christopher Joshua Benton is an American artist based in Miza, Abu Dhabi, working in socially engaged art and installation. He collaborates with academics, architects, scientists, and everyday people to imagine new ways of living and create new sites of knowledge production. Inspired by his 11 years living in the United Arab Emirates, he researches how the homeland endures inside immigrant populations.

Current long-term artistic research projects include spearheading an archive of Black dance with scientists from MIT’s Immersion Lab, with funding from Meta and the Brooklyn Museum; designing a public park for the government of Abu Dhabi; and heading a team of architects and urbanists to re-imagine overcrowded low-income housing in the United Arab Emirates.

His exhibitions have been presented at museums, biennials, and art fairs around the world, including the Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial, Fikra Graphic Design Biennial (Sharjah, UAE), and Abu Dhabi Art: Beyond Emerging (59th Venice Biennale). Further projects have been exhibited at Jameel Arts Centre (Dubai, UAE), 421 Art Campus (Abu Dhabi, UAE), Dubai Design Week, and BLOCKHOUSE (Tokyo, Japan), among others. His art and research have been televised on the BBC and CNN, and featured in print with GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, and Architectural Digest.

While in Cambridge, he earned a master’s degree in Art, Culture, and Technology from MIT and studied at Harvard, receiving the Obermayer Prize and the Harold & Arlene Shnitzer Prize. He has participated in programs and fellowships with the University of Georgia as a HOPE Scholar, the University of Oxford as a Gilman Scholar, and the Rhode Island School of Design as a Salama Bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation fellow. He is the former global creative director for Huawei.

Bita Fayyazi (b. 1962, Tehran) lives and works in Tehran. More than a sculptor, an installation artist, or a ceramicist engaged in some mystic relationship with her material, Fayyazi is an artist who works within a more performative and markedly social practice.
Fayyazi has been active in art for around 30 years. As her involvement in art developed, she became interested in teamwork and collaboration. She actively engages in collaborative and performative projects with artists and individuals with no artistic backgrounds. By embracing such interactions, she explores the power of shared creativity, fostering meaningful connections and broadening the boundaries of artistic expression. Throughout the years, working together with others has become an integral and cherished part of her practice. This approach has shown to be more valuable, often surpassing the outcome itself.

Roksana Pirouzmand (b. 1990, Yazd, Iran) is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Los Angeles. She holds an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles (2022), and a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts, California (2017).

Her practice deeply explores the dynamic interplay between the human body and its environment, examining its dual role as both a passive receiver or viewer and an active participant or performer. She is particularly interested in how the intrinsic qualities of materials—such as texture, weight, flexibility, and tension—can evoke sensory responses and establish a dialogue between the artwork and the audience. Through sculpture, installation, video, and performance, Pirouzmand creates engaging experiences that invite viewers to engage physically, and emotionally, blurring the boundaries between observation and participation. Her work often challenges traditional notions of space, movement, and perception, offering layered interpretations of how materiality and human presence intersect.

Iman Raad (b. 1979, Mashhad, Iran) is a Brooklyn-based visual artist, designer, and educator. He holds an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University, and is presently teaching at The Cooper Union School of Art.

Across his diverse work, Raad brings together a sweeping reimagining of traditional Persian painting amidst the interruption of images and narratives in the internet era. Oscillating between disparate areas of knowledge, Raad references a culture indexically rooted within his thoughts. Curiosity is given a place to breathe. Images are fractured or incomplete. Moments from different art histories are filtered into a language of comfort and contented longing, memories of a smell of a place far away; a repetition of imagery and color whose intention is to keep you in a disturbed reality.

In Raad's paintings, objects tumble and waver, provoked by swathes of restless birds. Deep tonal flourishes are augmented by a restless energy across his works–enhanced by a variety of techniques of depiction like the reverse painting on glass and the egg tempera. Through this prism of layers and colors, Raad has found a necessary platform to touch on both the complexities and beauty of cross cultural expression today.

Ali-Akbar Sadeghi (b. 1937, Tehran) is a renowned visual artist who started painting at an early age. He graduated with a BA from the College of Fine Arts of the University of Tehran in 1969. He worked as a graphic designer (posters, book covers, packaging) for many years before joining the Center for the Intellectual Development of Children and Adolescents (CIDCA) in 1971. CIDCA was a thriving center for creative work, and Sadeghi directed his attention to making animations and illustrating books.

Inspired by the folk culture of Iran, his lively, spirited canvases and illustrations are where modern and ancient aesthetics coincide.

In 1991, at the 25th anniversary of CIDCA, Sadeghi was honored for his outstanding book illustration and filmmaking achievements. In 2009, the Iranian Ministry of Culture (Ershad) recognized Sadeghi as "an outstanding cultural figure and contributor to Iranian art and culture.” Ali-Akbar Sadeghi has held 12 solo exhibitions in Iran and worldwide, including "A Retrospective" in the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in 2018. His works have appeared in numerous group exhibitions since 1984. He participated in the Singapore Biennale (2019). Dastan Gallery showed two works of the artist in "Soft Edge of the Blade" at Frieze's No. 9 Cork Street in February 2022 and at all the three exhibitions of “Mosavarnameh” between 2015 and 2018. Drawings and paintings of Sadeghi are held by many art institutions, including the British Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.

Yousha Bashir (b. 1989) is an Iranian post-digital artist currently active in his hometown of Tehran. He studied Visual Arts at Farhangian University (2011). Bashir works across media to create paintings, sculptures, and installation pieces.

Yousha Bashir is a dynamic artist whose work has undergone significant changes in style and output. His landscape series (Inner Landscapes, Outer Landscapes, Ultimate Landscapes, The Infinite Continuum) and his self-portraits are relational studies of form with the frame (the viewers' perception) and the space surrounding the frame. He thus challenges the painting’s solid framework by exploring the relationship between the digital realm and the physicality of painting. His vibrant and luminous imagery question the definition of the creative space and the creative loci in the digital age and computer graphics. The self and how it is separated from the real world is one of the central explorations throughout his works. With the loss of image clarity in the process of a digital translation, he arrives at frames that open to a new two-dimensional world defined by restrictions and opportunities each possesses.

Bashir has held six solo exhibitions, including his latest, "The Infinite Continuum" (Parallel Circuit, October-November 2021), and participated in more than 30 exhibitions, including at the Frieze Los Angeles (2022) as well as Art Dubai (2020 and 2021) with Dastan's Basement.