Expo in Ahmadinejad's Iran showcases avant-garde art

0 Comments | AFP, October, 2007

TEHRAN (AFP) — A video installation by world-famous US artist Bill Viola. Contemporary Japanese art tackling AIDS. A print by an Iranian filmmaker whose most recent work was not shown in the Islamic republic.

Perhaps not what you would expect to find in central Tehran, currently in the midst of its strictest moral crackdown in years and capital of a country increasingly at odds with the West over its controversial nuclear programme.

But all these works are part of a show at Tehran's museum of contemporary arts -- which shows there remains life in the Iranian arts scene under conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The exhibition, entitled "Manifestations of Contemporary Art in Iran," shows paintings, sculpture, photography, video art, performance and...