About the Author

Murtaza Vali is a critic, curator, editor, and Visiting Instructor at Pratt Institute, New York. He received an MA in Art History and Archaeology from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts (2004). He is a Contributing Editor at ArtAsiaPacific and an Editorial Correspondent for Ibraaz.org, and his writing has appeared in numerous international publications. He was Guest Curator for the Abraaj Group Art Prize 2013, and is the editor of Manual for Treason, a multilingual publication commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation for Sharjah Biennial 10 (2011). He lives and works between Sharjah, UAE, and Brooklyn, USA. Media Farzin is a New York-based art historian and critic, and a doctoral candidate in Art History at the City University of New York. She received her BFA in Painting from Tehran University, and an MA in Curatorial Studies from Columbia University. Her writings have appeared in Art in America, Art-Agenda, Artforum, Afterimage, Bidoun, and Canvas, among others, and she is author of numerous catalogue essays on contemporary art. She has taught at the Museum of Modern Art, the Sotheby's Institute of Art, and the City College of New York, and is currently a researcher at the Queens Museum. Eva Díaz is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art at Pratt Institute in New York. Her book The Experimenters: Chance and Design at Black Mountain College is due to be released by University of Chicago Press. Her writing has appeared in magazines and journals such as The Art Bulletin, Art Journal, Art in America, Cabinet, Frieze, Grey Room, October, and Tate Etc., and she is a regular contributor to Artforum. She is currently working on a book about the legacy of Buckminster Fuller’s work titled The Fuller Effect: The Critique of Total Design in Postwar Art. Kamrooz Aram was born in Shiraz, Iran, and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. He graduated from Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, in 2001, and received an MFA from Columbia University in New York City in 2003. His work has been widely exhibited internationally and featured in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, Art in America, Artforum.com, ArtAsiaPacific, and Bidoun. Aram is a recipient of the Abraaj Group Art Prize 2014.