Azim Morakabatchi’s Multi Media Exhibition / The Last 89 Seconds
The Volta Basel 2025 Art Fair, a leading event in modern and contemporary art, serves as a crucial platform for fostering dialogue between art from the Middle East and North Africa and European art. This year, the event emphasizes discovering and amplifying new voices in visual arts and introducing less-heard narratives. These are voices and talents that, while deeply rooted in their national cultures and social movements, can be considered a transnational and international platform, especially in the realm of visual arts. In line with this, the Volta Art Fair, by prioritizing solo presentations and focusing on cultural plurality and diversity, provides an ideal space for international dialogue among artists, audiences, curators, critics, and art analysts. Notably, this art fair not only highlights solo exhibitions but also welcomes galleries participating for the first time, offering them the chance to focus on a single artist, thereby ensuring cohesion in presentation and sales. Our alignment with the art fair's goals, particularly in the realm of humanism, led us to study the works of Iranian artists. From this, we selected Azim Morakabatchi as an artist with transnational potential and whose work resonates with the humanistic objectives of this art fair. Indeed, Mojdeh Art Gallery, after nearly 26 years of experience in organizing exhibitions, participating in international events, introducing emerging artists, and engaging with the art community including artists, curators, critics, and academics, has decided to dedicate its booth at this year's Volta Art Fair to showcasing works by Azim Morakabatchi. This decision not only aligns with Volta's objectives but also largely stems from the artist's capabilities. Azim Morakabatchi is an artist who, while deeply concerned with the study of images, transforms the visual realm into a narrative challenge for the viewer. This challenge, within the context of Iranians' daily lives, represents a historical-social question—a question reflecting decades and millennia of Iranian resilience and pursuit of freedom. Morakabatchi's works present a theatrical scene of repetitions and continuities, questioning the essence of individual and social identity. The sharp edge of his works indicates a move beyond the individual to understand them within the social sphere and their social actions. Although rhythm and movement play a fundamental role in his works, the body is also an inseparable part of most of Morakabatchi's creations. We are present with our bodies in a society that sometimes enslaves the body and at other times, through control, subjects it to suppression, fear, and deprivation.This is why Morakabatchi's works are interwoven and complex layers of meaning. They guide the viewer beyond a figurative understanding, inviting them towards a deeper, cognitive, and even active perception. Upon seeing his artworks, the audience begins to question identity, self, body, and society. In this way, Morakabatchi discovers realms of imagery that cannot be reduced to mere representation.
Mojdeh Art Gallery believes that, given the artist's visual expression, Morakabatchi's works can prompt international audiences to reflect on the aforementioned concepts. Furthermore, his artworks offer a more tangible and intimate understanding of Iran, its people, and Iranian identity within society: an identity that is fragmented, at times disconnected, and in a perpetual challenge between the historical and the mythological.
Sohrab Ahmadi
Azim Morakabatchi, The Last 89 Seconds, 2025, Oil on canvas, Unique Edition, 70 x 100 cm
