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In recent decades, the Middle East has faced ongoing political, economic, and social crises. These crises affect not only the content of artworks but also their form and structure. In common artistic analyses of crisis, narratives often have a defined beginning and end, and works are considered meaningful only when they directly reference war, repression, or catastrophe. This perspective, however, reduces art to a document or the testimony of a witness, overlooking a deeper understanding of art under conditions of survival. A more complex relationship emerges between the realities of life and visual approaches, where art becomes a formal response to the struggle to endure. This essay examines the aesthetics of contemporary Middle Eastern art in conditions of survival. From this perspective, the use of unstable media, unfinished narratives, low visual quality, silences, and refusals are conscious or inevitable strategies for documenting, continuing, and expressing ongoing resistance.

The focal point of wars, to a large extent, also encompasses cultural arenas, since each side seeks to assert the superiority of its own identity over the other in order to establish greater legitimacy before the world, and particularly before the opposing side. Here, artistic production becomes a central practice. Murals, songs, performances, and graffiti inscribe narratives of struggle and hope into everyday life. Art can have effects that both undermine the enemy’s morale and, through propaganda, counter the other side while constructing a narrative that resists repression. These narratives motivate people to participate in the field and defend what they believe in, serving as a symbolic archive of the hardships the people have endured and acting as a resource for collective memory. Many times, artworks are displayed directly on the battlefield, while at other times, memory persists in the battlefield through them.

The press conference for the first episode of Tehran Art Fair, attended by some members of the Gallery Owners Association, was held on Friday, December 11, in the event's meeting hall located in the Intellectual Development Center for Children and Adolescents.