Iranian artist Laleh Khorramian, represented by Dubai’s The Third Line, will join the Statements sector of the fair. [Every year, Art Basel’s Statements presents new solo projects by young and emerging artists and at the end of the four-day fair, two are awarded the Bâloise Art Prize.]

Khorramian’s project features mixed-media paintings and a video installation of fragments of a science fiction film titled M-GOLIS and set in 2202. In the film, the artist has created a chemically polluted planet of the same name that is populated only by prisoners whose sentence is to reside there and reverse the pollution. Viewers are invited to follow the journey of the inmate Lieutenant Aurelio Swimm, whose consciousness has been altered by extreme isolation and exposure to a toxic and increasingly hallucinogenic environment. The artist is not into the apocalyptic story but more into what happens after life begins again or is changed. She’d like to imagine a scenario where she is hovering over the recent past, witnessing transition and regrowth.

A refreshing change to see some art from the Middle East at this international forum that is not politically charged and instead based on something we can all relate to, a reflection on the human journey, about a man adapting to life in an unfriendly environment.

Keep checking back for FNND’s updates from Art Basel – 13-16 June.

Laleh Khorramian (b. Tehran, Iran) is a visual artist based in upstate New York. She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and Art Institute of Chicago, earning a BFA degree in 1997. She earned her MFA in 2004, from Columbia University, School of Visual Arts.