Globally Connected: Tehran, Athens & Venice: Dialogues on the Production of Art Around the World in 2020

Alex Nagel, Assistant Professor, History of Art, is in conversation with Cacao Rocks (Athens, Greece), Helia Darab, Aisling Sareh Haghshenas (Tehran), Sara Aghajani (Siegen) and Renato D’Agostin (Venice, Italy), to learn how artists and galleries around the world respond to COVID-19 and the challenges of 2020. Themes include community building, and ways to understand how artists around the world respond to the new world we live in. What are the themes that bind artist communities in Tehran, Athens and Venice in 2020? What are ways to respond and engage to the new global environment with the production of art in the summer and fall of 2020?This year's Globally Connected program is a series of 45-minute virtual discussions led by students, faculty, and alumni to advance global education at FIT in our new world with limited mobility. The major themes will be fashion, art, sustainability, racial equity, and life during the pandemic around the world.Cacao Rocks (Megoulas Yassonas, born 1985) is a street graffiti artist based in Athens, Greece. His work including paintings, sculptures, video art and installations, has been exhibited in museums and galleries including the Benaki Museum in Athens and the Onassis Cultural Center and Salomon Arts Gallery in New York City. He represented Greece at Mediterranea 2018 Young Artists Biennale.Helia Darabi, Tehran, is a Member of the Contemporary Art Committee in the Art Research Center at the Iranian Academy of Art and is writing and teaching on Contemporary Iranian Visual Art at Universities in Tehran and through her personal online platform.Aisling Sareh Haghshenas is an artist based in Tehran. Her work which includes urban photography, video and art installations was exhibited in the UAE, Russia, Austria, the US and the UK, Italy and Slovakia, and Turkey.Renato D’Agostin (born 1983) is a photographer based in Venice, Italy. In New York City, he worked as an assistant to Ralph Gibson. Renato’s work has been exhibited in The Library of Congress in Washington DC, the International Center of Photography in New York, as well as LACMA in Los Angeles and elsewhere