Sharifi Payam

In 2005, Payam Sharifi co-founded Slavs and Tatars, an art collective dedicated to an area between the former Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China better known as Eurasia. Slavs and Tatars has since exhibited at the Barbican, the London Design Museum, Colette, the Moscow Biennale, Netwerk Center for Contemporary Art, and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. Their most recent artist book, Kidnapping Mountains, was published by London-based Book Works.

Born and raised in Texas, Payam Sharifi is an essayist, artist, and strategist concerned with the politics of culture and the culture of politics. After graduating from Columbia University, Payam received a Marshall Scholarship to attend the Royal College of Art in London, where he studied for an MPhil in the department of Architecture and Design. He is the co-founder of the art collective Slavs and Tatars and has lectured at various institutions, including the Royal College of Art and the ICA in London, The Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, and the University of Tehran. His writing has been featured in several publications in Europe, North America and Asia.