Majid Bita. Il canto del dolore An instant display curated by Zoya Shokoohi.

A month after the opening of Finché non siamo libere (Until We Are Free), an exhibition dedicated to the condition of women in the world with a focus on Iran, on Wednesday 13 December at 6.30 pm, the Museum of Santa Giulia has enriched the exhibition with a new chapter: IL CANTO DEL DOLORE (THE SONG OF PAIN), an instant display by Iranian artist Majid Bita, an image creator, cartoonist, graphic designer and illustrator, who has been resident in Italy for some time.

The result of an intense exchange that began at the opening of the exhibition between the artist, the exhibition curator Ilaria Bernardi, the public and the Iranian artist Zoya Shokoohi, who had already been involved in the exhibition, this project is a participatory artistic creation that presents 40 stories in images created with watercolours and Indian ink.

The Municipality of Brescia and the Fondazione Brescia Musei with Alleanza Cultura, promoters of this new project, have entrusted its curatorship to Shokoohi herself, who has chosen to set up the works in a visual abacus of five stories, giving voice to the protagonists of her extraordinary images, in a narrative flow that speaks of propaganda, war, rebellion and militancy.

THE SONG OF PAIN will be presented to the public on Wednesday 13 December at 6.30 p.m. at the Museo di Santa Giulia, with a tra talk in which Majid Bita and Zoya Shokoohi will dialogue in the heart of the exhibition space.

Majid Bita was born in 1985 in Iran, where he spent his early years studying graphic art.
In 2014, he moved to Italy to devote himself to painting and then to the language of comics, attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, the city where he still lives and works today. A freelance illustrator and animator, he mainly works on editorial illustrations, storyboards for films, music video clips and animation films for various film projects. He has always maintained a strong link with the Iranian community in exile in various countries, reinforcing a relationship of cultural and artistic exchange and recognising drawing as an act of dissidence and daily political engagement, as is also evident in the graphic novel Born in Iran (Canicola, 2023).

Zoya Shokoohi is an Iranian artist, performer and researcher, born in Isfahan, currently residing in Florence. After a background in science, she studied visual arts, later specialising in museum and art anthropology.
Her artistic research focuses on the paradoxical aspects of contemporary life in the context of the globalised world. In her projects, she resorts to different mediums according to the needs of research and processes, keeping as a constant the attempt to make the spectator’s body become an active part of experiences that are both collective and self-reflexive. Among the areas investigated are micro- utopias, the reality of the contemporary art system and cultural systems.
He has exhibited in various galleries and museums including: Motorkhoone and Aknoon (Shiraze/Isfahan, 2020), Museo Novecento in Florence (2019), Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (2019), Palazzo Scuderie Ducali in Atri for the exhibition “Stills of Peace” (2019), Giardino dei Semplici, non-profit space La Portineria, area of the former San Salvi mental hospital and MAD (Florence, between 2019 and 2023), Spazio Matta in Pescara for the Fla festival (2022), Effetto Venezia festival in Livorno (2022), Casa degli Artisti and Mia Foto Fair (Milan, 2023).
His works have been acquired, among others, in the collections of the Novecento museum in Florence and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.