Often a question arises when I am talking about my work... it might be hostile or just as often, simply curious. "Do you really think that art can change the world?" Because my art is broadly political, the implication is political art is somehow not effective in the real world. It's a question that political artists are often confronted with and it is a question, I believe, most are already asking themselves, sometimes in frustration and sometimes in despair. But history and current examples show that it does have an effect. For all political artists the big question should be not whether political art is effective, but how it can have a bigger effect in the world.

Talk of ‘us’ and ‘them’ has long dominated Iran-related politics in the West. At the same time, Christianity has frequently been used to define the identity and values of the US and Europe, as well as to contrast those values with those of a Middle Eastern ‘other’. Yet, a brief glance at an ancient religion – still being practised today – suggests that what many take for granted as wholesome Western ideals, beliefs and culture may in fact have Iranian roots.

In times of uncertainty, art and culture become free spaces to transform cultural differences and political conflicts. “Uncertain States”, the Academy’s main autumn programme, opens up a space of artistic resistance to the loss of cultural memory, and to violence and xenophobia.

One of the consequences of globalization and the deterritorialization of financial capital has been that the decisions that affect world citizens are now made by representatives of a corporate oligarchy untethered from the direct interests of nation-states.

In recent years, in celebration of the Persian New Year, the Tehran Municipality and the Organization of Tehran Beautification have been organizing an annual spring urban art event comprised of art exhibits and installations in public spaces around the city.

The Fate of Art in the Age of Terror Boris Groys Source: E-Flux The relationship between art and power, or art and war, or art and terror, has always been an ambivalent one, to put it mildly. True, art needs peace and quiet for its development. And yet time and time again it has used this quiet, of all things, in order to sing the praises of war heroes and their heroic deeds.

Inhumanism is the extended practical elaboration of humanism; it is born out of a diligent commitment to the project of enlightened humanism.