Aria Farajnezhad
September 2023
Aria Farajnezhad (1989, Ahwaz) is a multidisciplinary artist and organizer with a background in engineering and a long-term engagement with rhythm and playing percussion. He is a sound and image examiner and his work encompasses a variety of mediums, leaning towards speculative forensis.
Aria co-ran the project space Circa106 between 2020-2022 and co-initiated the platform Future Archives as part of the Zefak collective in August 2020.
Farajnezhad is a former fellow at Ashkal Alwan’s Home Workspace Program (Beirut, Lebanon) between 2018-2019 and a former participant in the Spring Curatorial Program 2022: Art Geographies (Vienna, Austria). Aria is a former participant of the BICAR summer school 2023 (Beirut, Lebanon) and is currently a fellow at WHW Akademija 2023. (Zagreb, Croatia)
Aria holds a Diploma from the faculty of fine arts at the University of Arts Bremen where he completed the Meisterschüler*innen program in July 2022. His previous two works include Toppled from the Horizontal Axis, Gerhard Marcks Haus (Bremen, Germany), and Listening to the Rainbirds, BLG Forum (Bremen, Germany) both lengthy research-based sound/video installations deploying essayistic writing, editing, and poetry, and drawing to unfold over various mediums spanning from publication to film, and sculptures.
Since January 2023 Farajnezhad’s inquiry around the destabilizing preservation/ destruction dichotomy of the former state central bank building in Bremen found a leg in scrutinizing further the politics of over/ non/ under-representation imbued in public space constructions, the discourse around
Farajnezhad is a former fellow at Ashkal Alwan’s Home Workspace Program (Beirut, Lebanon) between 2018-2019 and a former participant in the Spring Curatorial Program 2022: Art Geographies (Vienna, Austria). Aria is a former participant of the BICAR summer school 2023 (Beirut, Lebanon) and is currently a fellow at WHW Akademija 2023. (Zagreb, Croatia)
Aria holds a Diploma from the faculty of fine arts at the University of Arts Bremen where he completed the Meisterschüler*innen program in July 2022. His previous two works include Toppled from the Horizontal Axis, Gerhard Marcks Haus (Bremen, Germany), and Listening to the Rainbirds, BLG Forum (Bremen, Germany) both lengthy research-based sound/video installations deploying essayistic writing, editing, and poetry, and drawing to unfold over various mediums spanning from publication to film, and sculptures.
Since January 2023 Farajnezhad’s inquiry around the destabilizing preservation/ destruction dichotomy of the former state central bank building in Bremen found a leg in scrutinizing further the politics of over/ non/ under-representation imbued in public space constructions, the discourse around
the preservation/ overwriting/ abolishing of the colonial and centrist edifices that perpetuate the role-allocation of superior/inferior, based on the proximity to the idealized singular referent - we.
In order to oppose a genre-specific over-representation of Man-as-Human, He is dealing with the particular next to the epistemological underpinning. For instance, co-initiating collective settings in which the racist mosaic mural in Bremen’s central station could be put up for a new proposal in which one would overwrite and suggest new imagery that shares ecumenical, hybrid, and non-hierarchical views on the notion of humanity.
Between 2021-2022 He also participated in the artist-in-residence at Künstlerhäuser (Worpswede, Germany) as part of the Zefak Collective, through which they initiated Future Archives (2020) which is an ongoing platform that has been invited since its formation to various events and venues to contribute among which, Association for Art History’s Annual Conference 2021(London, UK), Stadtgalerie and MM, M (Saarbrücken, Germany), Fag tips for arts space book (New York, US), Research and Waves (Berlin, Germany), Format: Walk and Talk (Bremen, Germany) and OSTEN Festival (Bitterfeld, Germany).
In order to oppose a genre-specific over-representation of Man-as-Human, He is dealing with the particular next to the epistemological underpinning. For instance, co-initiating collective settings in which the racist mosaic mural in Bremen’s central station could be put up for a new proposal in which one would overwrite and suggest new imagery that shares ecumenical, hybrid, and non-hierarchical views on the notion of humanity.
Between 2021-2022 He also participated in the artist-in-residence at Künstlerhäuser (Worpswede, Germany) as part of the Zefak Collective, through which they initiated Future Archives (2020) which is an ongoing platform that has been invited since its formation to various events and venues to contribute among which, Association for Art History’s Annual Conference 2021(London, UK), Stadtgalerie and MM, M (Saarbrücken, Germany), Fag tips for arts space book (New York, US), Research and Waves (Berlin, Germany), Format: Walk and Talk (Bremen, Germany) and OSTEN Festival (Bitterfeld, Germany).