Persbook is the first artistic contest in the cyber social network community and owes itself to the honest and dedicated friends who believe that “Culture can be transmitted and expanded through General Media without any geographical borders”
Persbook visual art contest take place in facebook annually. Neda Darzi the founder of Iranian Contemporary Art believes that: Persbook goal is to expand this artist community beyond the virtual world of internet to contradict the life inside a repressive society. Therefore, by having art as our common ground to reshape our society to be warm, loving and a peaceful place.
Considering the vast variety of the works and contents and performances in this section, the competition was “technique and title free”, and at the final round, works will be classified in eleven different groups: Painting, Photography, Drawing, Illustration, Graphic, Sculpturing, Video-Art, Installation, Environmental Art, Performance and Body Art.
The first round was judged by: Agnes Kohlmeyer, Annegret Soltau, Edward Lucie- Smith, Ahmad Nadalian, Ahmad Kiarostami, and Simin Dehqani
The last round was judged by: Agnes Kohlmeyer, Annegret Soltau, and Edward Lucie- Smith
At last, 37 of the whole 350 participants who shared their links were selected and nominated to the last round. The nominees are:
Painting:Elnaz Javani, Hamed Behroozkar, Mélodie Hojabr Sadat, Somayeh Moharami, Taha Heydari
Drawing: Ghazaleh Bahiraie, Habib Farajabadi, Maryam Dadgar, Nikzad Arabshahi, Parichehr Tayebi
Graphic: Maryam Peyravi, Mostafa Rezaei, Shadi Rezaei, Touraj Saberi Vand
Video-Art: Ramin Etemadi Bozorg, Zohreh Eskandari, Sam chegini
Installation: Neda Zarfsaz, Sepideh Farzam, Parisa Rajabiyan
Environmental art and performance/body art: Dariush Rad, Mahmoud Maktabi, New Art Group, Tara Goodarzy,Raheleh Zomorodinia
Photography: AmirHossein Keihani, Asieh Ruholamini, Bahareh Bisheh, Behzad Soltanmohammadi, Sahar mokhtari
Sculpturing: Ali Honarvar, Farzad Kohan, Raheleh Filsoofi
Illustration: Amir Alizadeh , Amir Khojaste, Farhad Mofawaz, Seyed Meysam Musavi
Persbook’s Interview with Edward Lucie-Smith:
How do you basically evaluate the Middle East contemporary art scene?
-It is one of the five most important: Western Europe, the United States, Latin America, China, the Middle East. Iran is the most important component in Middle Eastern contemporary art. It has the greatest number of good artists and the majority live in their own country. This is not the case with most other Middle Eastern countries, except perhaps Turkey. One problem for Iranian art, however, is that Middle Eastern art is often thought of in the West as being the same thing as Arabic art. This is obviously not the case. Some Arabic countries with excellent artists, such as Morocco and Tunisia.
not in fact Middle Eastern at all.
How did you accept to judge Persbook?
-Because I was asked to be a Primary honored director, How can I refuse?
Do you think this generation is capable of continuing a productive art environment in the future?
Yes, obviously. The Persbook competition attracted a huge number of young but excellent artists.And young generation artists have enough courage to Say what they want to say.
What are the criteria chosen to evaluate the art works?
-It’s hard to say, because in many branches of contemporary art you can’t compare like with like. You have to go with the feeling it gives you.
What future do you envision for the Iranian Contemporary art?-Basically it needs to break out and become fully recognized as part of the world art scene. In the end, Persbook realize :Besides, through the way we realized that we are limited in one other aspect and have a lot of deficiencies for the resources of Art information in Iran; hence, along with the “the Annual” we tend to establish and collect a bank of artistic information. We hope that the galleries, collectors and all who love art and care for it help us, by any mean they can…
Special thanks to Tandis Art Magazin’s Manager:
Mr.Mohamad Hamedi
http://www.newiranianart.com/photography_1.htm?LMCL=m9vlo2&LMCL=JC57sH