User:Amirbaradaran/Sandbox

Amir Baradaran (b. 1977) is a New York-based visual and performance artist. He was born in Tehran but moved to Montreal at the age of thirteen when his family relocated. He grew up surrounded by the literary works of his mother and grandfather, but art was not Baradaran's original pursuance and during his last year working toward a Masters of Arts in Communication Studies at Concordia University, he took up painting. While in school he studied political science, philosophy, and queer theory which at its core parallels his artistic career of exploring the cross-section of race and gender and how they interact in the public sphere. He also participated in a number of activist demonstrations throughout Canada.

His works are often site specific involving intensive research. There is not one specific medium Baradaran pays allegiance to, letting the formation of each piece dictate the mediums used, although contemporary technology often finds a role in his work. He received considerable critical recognition for a piece entitled, The Other Artist Is Present (2010), where he infiltrated the Museum of Modern Art with a performance in 4 acts.

Selected Works

Poetic Quarrel, 2007

This Collection of paintings in three series draws from a combination of influences dealing with contrasting ideas of existence explored by Baradaran: his own transnational identity, traditional and modern philosophies, Occidental and Oriental cultures, and classical Persian poetry.

Lavish Contemptuousness

In this first part of the series focus is placed on the influence of a metaphor presented by poet Muhammad Iqbal, who compares the stillness of the shore and the ever moving wave as two contrasting states of existence. Baradaran finds a parallel to the act of painting existing as a still presentation of a moving act through large circular hand gestures against elements acting still like that of the shore. The result was intended to evoke stimulating personal exploration unique to the viewer rather than attempt to represent the poem itself in the form of a painting.

Timeless Chat

In this next series, Baradaran attempts to extend toward the exploration of the traditional and the modern giving recognition to Iranian artists from the 1950's and 1960's in order to bring to light their return to their artistic traditions in order to "break down the boundaries of modernity." It is here that Baradaran includes intertwining cirlces which are the essential shapes of the word "Hé" in calligraphy and rosary to represent spiritual growth and the

Social Engagements

• 2002 International Diaspora Film Festival (Mtl, Toronto, NY)

managing director

Writing Contributions

• Shari Brotman et Joseph J. Lévy… Amir Baradaran et al. 2008.

Québec: Presses de l'Université du Québec Intersections: Cultures, sexualités et genres, Québec: Presses de l'Université du Québec

• Ryan, Bill, Shari Brotman, and Amir Baradaran. 2006. The Colour of Queer Health Care: Experiences of Multiple
• Oppression in the Lives of Queer People of Colour in Canada. Montreal: School of Social Work, McGill University

Conferences and Lectures

• Sexual Representation in Cinema: Queering Muslim Bodies (lecture), 2007, Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University
• Women and Development (lecture), 2006, Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Concordia University
• Culture Shock: HIV/AIDS (presentation), 2006, Quebec Public Interest Research Group, McGill University
• Iranian Women after Twenty Years of Revolution: Opportunities and Challenges (presentation), 2005, Congress on Paradoxes of Citizenship: Environment, Exclusion, Equity, Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS)/Canadian Association for the Study of Development (CASID), University of Western Ontario
• Representing Muslim Bodies: Death Over "Here" and Over "There" (presentation), 2005, Racial Violence and the Color Line of the New World Order, Researchers and Academics of Color in Canada for Equity (RACE), Dalhousie University
• Sexuality and the Diaspora (presentation), 2005, Second Generation Iranians Looking Inward: Religion, Gender and Sexuality, Iranian Alliances Across Borders (IAAB), University of Maryland
• Orientalism and Middle Eastern Desires (lecture), 2005, Ethics of Sexuality, School of Religious Studies, McGill University
• Re-Orienting the Queer and Queering the Orient (presentation), 2004, 5th Biennial Conference: Iran and the Iranian Cultural World as an "Other" in Academic and Popular Representations, International Society for Iranian Studies/Critique Magazine: Critical Middle East Studies, Bethesda, MD
• Racism and Identity Formations (lecture), 2003, Seminar of Diversity, School of Social Work, McGill University
• Resistance Against the Empire (presentation), 2003, Annual International Conference/Retreat, Alternatives Canada, Montreal, Canada

External links

• AmirBaradaran.com Artist's website