Ruderal Acts — Amin Yousefi

Amin Yousefi born in 1996 in Abadan, Iran, is a London-based writer, researcher, and image-based artist. He holds a Master’s degree in Documentary Photography from the University of Westminster. A native of Abadan in the province of Khuzestan, Iran's most oil-rich region, and the scene of a bloody war with neighbouring Iraq, Yousefi's work examines the event of photography through the socio-political aspect of the medium. His primary concern lies in the implications of the archive, exploring violence in the Middle East enacted and how the act of photography can conceptually mirror the structures of these relationships.
Yousefi's work has been featured in several exhibitions and awards, including being named a 2024 Foam Talent Award winner. His project "Eyes Dazzle as They Search for the Truth" was selected as a finalist for the 2022 Carte Blanche Awards at Paris Photo and was later exhibited with Ag Galerie at the 2023 Unseen Art Fair in Amsterdam. His work has also been showcased at the 2024 Belfast Photo Festival, the 2024 Athens Photo Festival, and the 2024 Kranj Photo Festival. Additionally, Yousefi participated in the 2024 Circulation(s) festival at Centquatre-Paris and the 2024 Back to the Future exhibition at Peckham 24.

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Ruderal Acts, Gardening Beyond the Wall [2021]

Ruderal Acts, Gardening Beyond the Wall aims to challenge the image of the garden as an enclosed system within which man controls the natural world, imagining a more open and indeterminate space informed by mutual care and cohabitation. Through careful observation, documentation, and presentation, the project suggests a different kind of garden formed in the left-behind urban and rural sites, ruins, and transitional places. The project takes the abandoned and walled-off Rayy Cement Factory—a site located in the southeast part of Tehran, Iran—as a starting point for an alternative idea of a garden. One that benefits from blurred boundaries is shaped by the organic growth of ruderal species and cultivated by often unintended events: the leakage of a pipe, shading provided by a brick wall, or flora migration from agricultural activities. Carrying on this vision through multiple strategies, Gardening Beyond the Wall develops over time, unlike acts in a play, using the city of Tehran as its stage and its citizens as its actors, custodians, and ultimately gardeners.

Collaborators:
Amin Yousefi - Photographer
Nafiseh Samadi - Botanist
Hadi Zand - Photojournalist
Michela Zoppi - Graphic designer