Born in Tehran in 1976, Ali Banisadr’s formative childhood years were during the Iran-Iraq war. Banisadr earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2005, and an MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2007, where he was awarded the Postgraduate Fellowship followed by winning an award in painting from New York Foundation for the Arts. He is currently represented by Galerie Thaddeus Ropac in Paris and Sperone Westwater in New York. He has recently had solo exhibitions at Frieze New York, BlainSouthern Gallery in London, and Galerie Ropac in Paris, and appeared in group shows at the Venice Biennale, the Prague Biennale, the Queens Museum of Art, Stedelijk Museum (Ghent), Victoria Miro Gallery (London) and the Saatchi Gallery (London). His works are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Francois Pinault Foundation and the Saatchi Collection, among others.