Omid Delafrouz - Terra Nullius: Stockholm

Andréhn-Schiptjenko is delighted to present Omid Delafrouz's fourth solo exhibition at the gallery, Terra Nullius. The exhibition opens on Thursday 1 October between 17:00 and 20:00. 

Terra Nullius means 'no man's land' in Latin. The exhibition title can be interpreted literally, but it is also a term in international law used to define the legal status of a landmass. Prior to its current judicial usage, the thought model of a 'Terra Nullius' was employed during the colonial era as a means of power to justify arbitrary occupations of already inhabited territories, where the indigenous population was often driven from their land or exterminated.

In the exhibition, Delafrouz delves into modern political history through oil paintings that thematically revolve around humanity's territorial claims on the planet; a violent struggle for world domination that increasingly seems to make the evolutionary emergence of intelligent life appear as a lethal mutation. 

Delafrouz came to Sweden from Iran as a UN quota refugee and grew up in a politically active environment. Political paintings and illustrations, as well as classical Western art and the myths and stories it reflected, were an integral part of his early childhood. This background is evident in the exhibition, which also reflects on the security order that emerged after the Second World War, when the United Nations and the European Union were founded.

In contrast to the political art that accompanied his upbringing, the viewer is here instead invited into an associative web of interconnected images, references and contemporary phenomena, through which Omid Delafrouz takes poetic licence to interweave different images in order to address modern history and our times in a broader sense.

Omid Delafrouz (born 1982 in Tehran, Iran) lives and works in Stockholm. Delafrouz graduated from Malmö Art Academy in 2005 and completed his Master's degree in 2007 at Valand Academy of the Arts in Gothenburg. His work has been exhibited at institutions such as Alingsås Konsthall, Eskilstuna Art Museum, Bohuslän Museum and Göteborgs Konsthall.