Ministry of Nomads

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• Other Works

Mahmoud Bakhshi's work directly engages with the political and social issues of contemporary Iran. Drawing on familiar motifs from his home, Bakhshi explores the seemingly arbitrary boundaries and real divisions that inform national identity. After graduating with a BFA in sculpture from Tehran University, Bakhshi has contributed to numerous exhibitions in Iran and internationally. Exhibiting in his home country has caused him to develop a complex range of means to encode any critical perspective. His 2006 solo exhibition, Mahmoud's Driving School at Tehran Gallery, presented a blackly comic translation of the diagrams used to teach right-of-way rules at intersections. Cheerfully coloured cartoons showing red, yellow and blue vehicles negotiating a crossroads were captioned with horrifying descriptions of imminent violence: "The blue truck has right of way. It carries 150kg of explosives and will stop opposite a hospital in the next street."