LONDON, July 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- BE OPEN Art, an online art gallery set up by BE OPEN think tank, a humanitarian initiative founded by Austria-based international businessperson and philanthropist Elena Baturina, is running a competition for emerging artists, aimed to support those whose art best represents their regional, cultural and ethnic identities – BE OPEN Regional Art.

Every month of the 2^rd quarter of 2024, works by 20 emerging artists from the countries of Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen were posted at the online gallery for the public to select the Regional Artist of the Month.

In April, young Iraqi painter Samar Alzaidy, was selected the Regional Artist of the Month and became the first of the three candidates for the Artist of the Region and the 500 euros prize. She studied at the Ceramics Institute and has been part of a number of arts exhibitions internationally. Experimenting with watercolors is an important thing in Samar's creative work.

In May, the title passed on to Anahita Zabehi, an artist based in Tehran; and in June to Bahargol Ebrahimi, an Iranian painter as well.

The art committee headed by Aidan Salakhova, an internationally acclaimed Azeri artist, sculptor and activist, has chosen Samar Alzaidy the Artist of the Region for the Middle East. The artist will be offered a grant of 500 euro from BE OPEN.

Founder of BE OPEN Elena Baturina selected her own favourite among the young Middle Eastern artists: Sahar Alizadeh, a contemporary Iranian artist, for the dreamlike shadow-filled paintings, full of dislocated and deformed shapes that still tell suspenseful stories. Now based in the UAE, Sahar was born in 1995 in Tehran, where she received a Bachelor in Interior Architecture from Rasam Institute of Higher Education. She was a participant of the London Art Biennale in 2021, and represented the Islamic Republic of Iran. She also took part in the Dubai Expo that same year.

The regional competition runs alongside the regular ongoing work of BE OPEN Art, whose experts every month select 20 new artists for the gallery, using online voting to name the Artist of the Month and the Artist of the Year. 

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SOURCE BE OPEN Foundation