Ali Ettehad
Ali Ettehad (born 1983, Iran) is a multidisciplinary
artist and writer whose practice spans
books, video
art, theater, performance art,
digital media, installation, and film. Since 2004, he has presented
numerous solo exhibitions,
theatre works, and artistic events across Iran and internationally.
Ettehad’s work centers on the culture and history of West Asia.
He treats cultural-historical narrativesas foundational material,using them to
create space for rethinking and reinterpretation. A core focus of his artistic
inquiry is the concept of text—viewing it both as the cornerstone of human thought and
as a decipherable code whose meaning continually evolves from one era to the next.
Epistola Avium
Ali Ettehad
Ali Ettehad
Epistola Avium is a video-based exhibition by Ali Ettehad inspired by The Epistle of the Birds, attributed to Ibn Sina and later translated by Suhrawardi. The story of birds held in captivity — who gradually forget their ability to fly — forms the conceptual ground of the exhibition.
In Ettehad’s works, captivity is not imposed from outside but slowly internalized. The birds are
restrained by what remains attached to them: habits, memories, and perceptions that shape the mind.
Yet flight remains possible. The exhibition returns repeatedly to this tension — between what binds us
and what still allows movement.
Across a series of video works created between 2024 and 2026, often in collaboration with the 366th
Performing Art Group, Epistola Avium reflects on freedom not as escape, but as remembrance. Even
when traces of restraint persist, the capacity to move — to imagine, to perceive differently — has not
disappeared. What is at stake is not release, but recognition.