A graduate teaching fellow in the Department of Art has been awarded an Oregon University System Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund Graduate Fellowship for International Research.

The award to Farhad Bahram carries a $6,000 stipend that begins in the fall. Bahram, an international student from Iran, began the MFA program at the Eugene campus in 2012.

The intent of the award is "to nurture future leaders who will transcend geopolitical, religious, ethnic and cultural boundaries in the world community for the peace and the well-being of humankind." Fellowships are awarded to full-time, degree-seeking graduate students for one academic year of scholarly endeavors in projects with an international dimension.

Bahram’s proposal, “Reversality: A global project,” is “a sequential outline in phases to put the participating artists through the process of self-identification.”

The project will invite ten to fifteen artists from different cultures to submit self-portraits, assigning a color that represents their identity. Phases will address the act of portraiture in different cultures, the evolution of site-specificity and its connection to self-identity and other areas.

Department of Art faculty members Terri Warpinski, Dan Powell and Tannaz Farsi recommended Farhad for the award.

The award “is a substantial and rather rare award to receive,” associate professor Carla Bengtson said. “It is a wonderful recognition of the ways in which art can contribute to a global cultural exchange around topics that impact us all.”

- from the UO School of Architecture and Allied Arts