Sohrab Mahdavy on Europe's need for suffering

Sohrab Mahdavy, co-founder of online magazine TehranAvenue.com, reflects on the ties between Iranian art and the West: "Eagerly and with open arms we receive the Western curator who tells us what to do... Exotic is our old gift to the world, misery our modern one. Europe wants to know what it's like to experience misery. This way it's less painful - just as it's easier for a pious rich man to pay someone to say his prayers from him. There really is such a job, and in a similar way ethnic art offers Europe the possibility of understanding our misery and sympathising with it. Europe needs this dose of misery to give its own life more meaning. Otherwise it would have to experience it for itself."

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