Becky Haghpanah-Shirwan Editor

Born on August 15, 1950, in New York, the American artist Andres Serrano first came to public attention with his controversial work Piss Christ (1987), depicting a crucifix submerged in the artist’s urine. Other notorious projects include photographs of recently deceased bodies, and a series of portraits of Ku Klux Klan members. In the late ’80s and early ’90s his works were a flashpoint in what became known as the “culture wars,” inspiring a national debate on freedom of expression and the public funding of controversial art in America. Jerry Saltz is an American art critic. Since 2006, he has been senior art critic and columnist for New York magazine. Formerly the senior art critic for The Village Voice, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2018 and was nominated for the award in 2001 and 2006. He has also contributed to Art in America, Flash Art International, Frieze, and Modern Painters, among other art publications. Eleanor Heartney is an author and Contributing Editor to Art in America and Artpress. Among her books are Art and Today, Postmodernism, and Postmodern Heretics: The Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art. She is a co-author of After the Revolution: Women who Transformed Contemporary Art and The Reckoning: Women Artists in the New Millennium.  Becky Haghpanah-Shirwan co-founded a/political in 2013, a non-profit organisation based in London and Maubourguet. Working as Director, she has created an international collection of socio-political art and produced a series of large-scale projects worldwide. She graduated from The Courtauld Institute in 2008, completing an MPhil in 2010. Stephen Stapleton (1976) is a British/Norwegian artist, curator and founding director of Edge of Arabia, CULTURUNNERS, and The Crossway Foundation, all platforms for cultural exchange across international borders. He has produced over 50 international exhibitions and published a series of acclaimed artists’ books with Booth-Clibborn Editions.