Life Death and Other Similar Things

Amin Yousefi

Un/related Memories [soon]
Ashes and Snow [2023]
Eyes Dazzle As They Search for The Truth [2022]
Life, Death, and Other Similar Things [2019]

Foam Talent: February 23 — May 22, 2024

Circulation(s): April 6 — 2 June, 2024

Peckham 24: May 17 — May 26, 2024
Belfast Photo Festival: June 6 — June 30, 2024
Kranj Photo Fest: August 21 — September 28, 2024

Amin Yousefi was born in 1996 in Abadan, Iran, and holds an MA in Photography from the University of Westminster. He lives and works as a writer, researcher, and image-based artist in London. He has participated in several group exhibitions and prizes, including recently being named a 2024 Foam Talent Award winner. His recent project, "Eyes Dazzle as They Search for the Truth," was selected as a finalist of the Carte Blanche Awards at Paris Photo in 2022. It was subsequently shown with Ag Galerie at the Unseen Art Fair 2023 in Amsterdam. His work has been published in magazines such as Hapax and Aperture, with the article in which he interviewed three artists on "What It Means to Make Photographs as a Young Artist in Iran." Yousefi has also undertaken compelling commission works, including the project "Ruderal Acts, Gardening Beyond the Wall," showcased as part of the HerMAP Art Project at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Belgium. He was also selected as an Ag Talent for his "Life, Death, and Other Similar Things" project in 2019, exhibited in a solo show at the Ag Galerie. Yousefi has an upcoming display in June 2024 with the Belfast Photo Festival in Belfast, Northern Ireland. A native of Abadan in the province of Khuzestan, Iran's most oil-rich region, and the scene of a bloody war with neighbouring Iraq, Yousefi's work examines the event of photography through the socio-political aspect of the medium. His primary concern lies in the implications of the archive, exploring violence against protests in the Middle East enacted by the state and how the act of photography can conceptually mirror the structures of these relationships.

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Life, Death and Other Similar Things [2019-2021]

The sound of the fidoos horn is the familiar rising call of Iran's oil-producing regions, which signifies the beginning of the working day for the oil workers and the entire city.

This is southwestern Khuzestan, with its three rivers and oil refinery, after the sound of the fidoos and before the unforgiving heat of its noontime sun. Khuzestan is Iran's most ancient region and the birthplace of its nation. It is a region blessed and cursed by its wealth of oil and natural gas, pillaged in an eight-year war with neighboring Iraq and crushed under the weight of the sanctions and an ineffective government. The local population is made up of Lurs, Iranian Arabs, Qashqai people, Afshars, indigenous Persians, Iranian Armenians, and the Bakhtiari people. Khuzestan has excellent potential for agricultural expansion, which is almost unrivaled by the country's other provinces. Significant and permanent rivers flow over the entire territory, contributing to the fertility of the land. Karun, Iran's most effluent river, 850 kilometers long, flows into the Persian Gulf through this province. The agricultural potential of most of these rivers, particularly in their lower reaches, is hampered by the fact that their waters carry salt, which increases as the rivers flow away from the source mountains and hills. During the Iran–Iraq War, Khuzestan was the focus of the Iraqi invasion of Iran, leading to the flight of thousands of the province's residents. As a result, Khuzestan suffered the heaviest damage of all Iranian provinces during the war.

What used to be Iran's largest refinery at Abadan was destroyed, never to be fully recovered. Many of the famous Nakhlestans (palm groves) were annihilated, cities were destroyed, and historical sites were demolished. However, Khuzestan remains one of Iran's most hospitable regions. As the great poet Nizami said, "Her lips aflow with sweet sugar, the sweet sugar that aflows in Khuzestan."