FREEWAY: LITTLE SYRIA ARTISTS

Brian Zegeer was born in Lexington, KY. His works encounter the Appalachian and Lebanese landscapes of his parentage as highly-charged networks of affiliation and group narrative. Zegeer believes that the process of stop-motion animation can catalyze objects in the landscape to reveal their metaphoric, political, and forensic content--the ghosts of their obscure histories. In 2015 at the Queens Museum, Zegeer will stage the Little Syria Archive, a collection of historical artifacts, stereoscopic 3D animations, and public encounters transcribing the history and notable luminaries of New York’s first Arabic enclave. Zegeer also co-hosts the interview-based radio program I Ran into Iran (Creativetime Reports, ResonanceFM, London). He received his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, attended Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting in 2010, and has recently shown at The Queens Museum, The Delaware Art Museum, The Jersey City Museum, Louis V. ESP, Regina Rex, Elga Wimmer Gallery, and Stephan Stoyanov Gallery.

Husam Al-Sayed is a Saudi-based Palestinian filmmaker and founding member of the Telfaz 11, one of the Middle East's most influential Arabic online video networks based in Riyadh. With over seven million subscribers and over 750 million views throughout its network, Telfaz11 has attracted and helped launch some of the top creative internet talent in the Middle East.

SALAR is a Dubai-based Iranian performance artist, electronic music composer and founding member of the Analog Room, a DJ and music platform in the Middle East with an international residency program for electronic music composers. Since launching in 2012, Analog Room has cultivated an extensive network of regional-grown electronic music composers and generated increased awareness about the medium.

FREEWAY: LITTLE SYRIA CURATOR

Ava Ansari is an artist, educator, and curator. She is the associate curator of The Edge of Arabia US Tour, where she recently co-curated the Culturunners Storytelling Symposium hosted by MIT's Art, Culture and Technology Program. She is the co-founder of The Back Room, a curatorial and pedagogical project that facilitates exchanges between artists and scholars in Iran and the US. Recent projects include, Open Relationship, an eight-week workshop developed in collaboration with CultureHub in New York, Sazmanab Center for Contemporary Art in Tehran, and Mani Studio in Isfahan; I Am Only a Reporter, an exhibition of later works by Ardeshir Mohassess, Modern Section of Art Dubai, 2014; A Call, a project conceptualized with Wafaa Bilal and eighty participating performers, which opened concurrently at Aaran Gallery in Tehran, and White Box in New York. As an artist, Ansari has presented work at ISEA2014, Dixon Place, La Mama, Eyebeam, the AC Institute, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, among others.