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Kasra Goodarznezhad  

“When people ask you, oh, yeah, who's your biggest influence or something like that, I always have a hard time answering it. But I think mostly it's people who don't, who haven't, how do you say it… like who haven't made it, probably, who are missed. Every time you think about this stuff, people who've died, people who overdosed, people who you're like, oh shit, they would have realized their potential. Like, what would have happened if they didn't die when they were, like, 27 or like 30 or something like that? They did so much shit when they were in their 20s. What if they were alive right now? That's what I'm the most fascinated by. I think that's what most of my work is about as well, the looping resistance and how fighting things become a routine kind of thing. It might look exciting from outside, but for people, it's just another day, still alive, you know?”

Kasra Goodarznezhad draws on experiences of discontent in both Tehran and Toronto to depict moments of release. His work offers the potential for either hope or profound disappointment, and the audience is often left unsure of which they are meant to feel.

His artistic production attempts to narrativize moments in time. As a curator, he prefers art and artists that offer the potential for release.

As an organizer, he manifests new ways to undermine the hegemony of oppressive structures. Some efforts persist while others release violently allowing energies to be leveraged elsewhere.