This time Page Not Found invited the audience for a dialogue with Mahmoud Bakhshi. Born in 1977 in Tehran (Iran), Mahmoud Bakhshi lives and works between his hometown and Amsterdam. In 2001, he graduated with a BA in Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran. In 2014, he attended the Rijksakademie’s artist residency. In addition to his participation in local and international exhibitions, Bakhshi founded Bon-Gah, a non-profit initiative located in Karasht (Iran), which works as a publishing house and provides an alternative space for artists to further pursue their studio-practice.

Bakhshi’s installations and sculptural works analyze the aesthetics of post-revolutionary Iran, composed of a distinctive combination of ideological Islam, industrial capitalism and the liberational iconography of the 1979 Revolution and the Islamic Iran. His work represents a struggle between an art that is self-conscious of its independence and the propaganda of the state.

The dialogue in Page Not Found focused on the project “Night, Blackness and Other Stories…”, and the book that accompanies this work. Reflecting on the effect of censorship on literature and art, this conversation discussed whether it is possible to foresee the future of one’s artwork and the impact it has on the society. The talk was followed by an introduction to the initiative Bon-Gah