In a country where the ruling government continues to instrumentalize art to serve its ideological agenda, controlling institutions, capital, and visibility, the Tehran Biennale was founded as a counter-institution, operating outside the confines of state narratives and cultural propaganda. It reclaims the biennale format as a tool of resistance, autonomy, and collective imagination.

Following the first edition in 2023, which revived the lost spirit of the pre-revolutionary Tehran Biennale, The Tehran Biennale 02 (May 29–31, 2025) expands its reach beyond Iran’s geographical borders. This second edition grows from the ruins of censorship into a rhizomatic network of solidarity, connecting artists from Iran, Colombia, and China, with more to come. Together, they form a constellation of counter-voices from the Global South, where art is not a commodity but a gesture of emancipation.

Curated by Erfan Ghiasi in the aftermath of the fourth Tehran Summit, this edition unfolds as a three-day international happening. Each day is dedicated to a different country, where artists intervene in their own streets, public spaces, and hidden corners—reclaiming territories through ephemeral, context-driven acts of disruption. Rather than gathering art inside white cubes, the biennale dissolves the walls, extending its pulse across time zones and cities.

The Tehran Biennale 02 uses the internet as an emancipatory force, circulating documentation, reflections, and digital pamphlets among invited participants worldwide. Through this decentralized format, the biennale transforms into a living archive of collective gestures—each work ephemeral, site-specific, low-cost, yet charged with political and poetic urgency. The name Tehran Biennale is not a claim of ownership but an invocation of origin. It acknowledges Iran’s oppressive cultural and political terrain as the fertile ground from which this movement grows. From this soil emerges an underground network of artists, thinkers, and saboteurs—a global alliance cultivating practices rooted in democracy, equality, and sustainability.

The Tehran Biennale 02 is not an exhibition; it is a movement. It is a refusal to be contained—an act of cultural heresy that redefines how art can move, connect, and transform under constraint. In a world fractured by censorship and isolation, it stands as a symbolic gesture of resistance and renewal: a call to imagine, to act, and to reclaim the future through art.