Ahmad Navid Mashouf from Herat, Afghanistan is the second AR-artrmx studio Resident in Cologne, Germany. Mashouf is currently a Ph.D student in the Analytical and Comparative History of Islamic Art at Tehran University and previously graduated with a Masters in Islamic Art from Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran, Iran.
From 2013 to 2021, he taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Herat University, Afghanistan and ran the Afghanistan Art and Culture Research Institute together with his wife. Following the Taliban takeover in August 2021 and their repression of art and artists, the couple decided to leave Afghanistan.
Mashouf has been working in the field of art, particularly miniature and traditional oriental art, for over 18 years. Unable to find avenues or opportunities over the past year to continue his artistic work, he applied to Artists at Risk (AR) for a residency.
According to Mashouf, “Art is knowledge and the artist is a mystic.” Through his work, he seeks to “know and understand pure truth”, and adds that, “I paint history, culture and what I had lost lately on the canvas so that history will be a witness.”
Ahmad Navid Mashouf is an Artists at Risk (AR)-Resident at artrmx e.V. The programme is co–funded by Crespo Foundation and co-organised by Perpetuum Mobile (PM) as part of the AR-Network.
