B. 1979 Sabzevar, Iran

Mojtaba Amini (B. 1980) graduated with a BFA in Painting from The College of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran. His bluntly morbid installations, paintings, sculptures, and assemblages are dismal and disturbing, dealing with the recollections of his childhood and facing death, developing from there not only to a means of psychological healing but also to reflect on the situation of people banished from their homelands, losing their lives resisting ignorance or violence rampant in our region. In his “Tear Town” series, he has turned to irony, defiance, and criticality in his depictions of civil rights protests across the world. His collage of found internet imagery on sandpaper and scorned postal packages is a negotiation of the meaning of protests if the cities are absent. As with the concerns of the exhibition, his works are representative of the multiple ways that artists approach speaking to power, here more potently and blatantly obvious but sharply satirical.