Dr. Shiva Balaghi is an independent scholar and curator. Balaghi was among the first faculty to introduce the subject of Contemporary Middle Eastern Art at US universities, teaching for nearly two decades at NYU and Brown University…
Bahram Beyzaie is one of Iran’s most acclaimed filmmakers, playwrights, and scholars of the history of Iranian theater, both secular and religious. He was a leader of the generation of filmmakers known as the Iranian New Wave…
Jeff Chang is a renowned social historian, organizer, and author; his ground-breaking work in politics, music, arts, and activism has had a profound cultural impact in the fight for racial justice. A driving force behind the deeply emotional #StopAsianHate video (featuring Olivia Munn and Simu Liu)…
Mehdi Ghadyanloo is an Iranian artist known for his utopian and philosophical paintings that interrogate universal human precepts such as fear, hope and loss. Through the portrayal of minimal heterotopic environments, surreal architectural arrangements…
Ghalamdar (“the writer” in Farsi) is a graffiti artist (born 1994, Tehran, Iran), working since 2006. He is an active member of Calligraffiti community and called between the four most recognized Iranian street artists who are making their own mark by Art Radar Journal…
Talinn Grigor is a Professor of Art History in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of California, Davis. Her research concentrates on the cross-pollination of art and (post)colonial politics, focused on Iran and India…
Christiane Gruber is Associate Professor of Islamic Art in the History of Art Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her primary field of research is Islamic book arts, paintings of the Prophet Muhammad, and Islamic ascension texts and images…
Marie Huber is Assistant Professor of Persian and Comparative Literature. Her research focuses on 20th century poetry and poetics, mystical discourses and heterodoxies in the Persian and Ottoman traditions, the intersections of literature with philosophy and ethics…
Pamela Karimi is an Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. She is an architect and an architectural historian who earned her Ph.D. from the History, Theory & Criticism of Art and Architecture Program at MIT in 2009…
Sohrab Kashani is an interdisciplinary artist and an independent curator based in Tehran. Sohrab is the founder and director of Sazmanab, formerly a center for contemporary art and a not for profit art space…
Bahman Kiarostami was born in Tehran in 1978, he started working as an assistant director in 1996. His films have focused on the political power of faith inside contemporary Iranian culture and eloquently explores the complex layers of religious significance in the Iranian controversial society…
Ahoo Najafian is a Ph.D. student in the Religious Studies department at Stanford. Her work examines cultural manifestations of religion with a focus on literature and visual arts…
Rasoul Najafian was born in 1951 in Tehran. He learned the theory and practice of music with Esmaeil Mehrtash and studied acting and directing for four years with Mostafa Oskouei. In 1974, his short film Papoli Jan won the first prize of the ABU Asian Film Festival…
Mohsen Namjoo is a songwriter, singer, music scholar and setar player (traditional Persian lute). His musical style weaves a mosaic, mixing Persian music and poetry, Western rock, blues, and jazz to create something that is uniquely his own…
Nasser Rahmaninejad, a foremost celebrated Iranian artist started his theatre career in 1959 in Iran. In response to the authoritarian cultural policies and harsh censorship of the Shah’s regime, he founded his alternative, independent theatre group, Mehr, in 1966…
Morshed Mostafa Sa’idi is among the last naqqals of his generation, and is actively involved in mentoring young storytellers who continue the tradition while adding their own style to the craft…
Parisa Simin-Mehr holds a BA in History and is a student of Persian Literature. She started her work in theater in 1995 and has been working on the Shahnameh and professional storytelling (naqali) since 2000 under the mentorship of Mostafa Sa’idi, one of the last remaining old-school storytellers of Iran…
Slavs and Tatars is a faction of polemics and intimacies devoted to an area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia. The collective’s work spans several media, disciplines, and a broad spectrum of cultural registers…
Mike “Bam” Tyau was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. He has been in connected with graffiti writing since 1983. He earned his BFA in graphic design at USF and the Academy of Art in San Francisco, California. Mikeʻs paintings reflect positive, colorful energy forces that reflect nature…
Raheleh “Minoosh” Zomorodinia is an Iranian-born educator and multimedia artist who employs photography, video, installations and performance to make visible for audiences her emotional and psychological reflections as seen in her mind’s eye and inspired by nature…
