Birmingham art academic and former teen soldier scoops top prize
A Birmingham artist and academic who was enlisted in the Iranian military at 14 and later fled to the West Midlands to escape conflict has been named as the winner of a Coventry gallery’s public art competition.
Dr Mohsen Keiany, a Visiting Lecturer at Birmingham School of Art and Birmingham City University architecture alumnus, whose work responds to ongoing violence in Iran and his own experiences as a soldier, made first place at the 2023 Coventry Open at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum for his painting ‘The Motherland’.