TEHRAN-The 16th Fajr Visual Arts Festival kicked off at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA) on Sunday.

Organized under the slogan “Innovative, Creative, Unifying, and Hopeful Art,” the festival offers 771 artworks of different mediums by 517 artists in two competitive and non-competitive sections, the secretary general of the festival said at the opening ceremony.

“In addition to Tehran, the festival is held in other 30 provinces of Iran, presenting 1,539 works by 420 artists at prestigious exhibition centers across the country,” ILNA quoted Amir Abdolhosseini as saying.

“The selected works have been chosen from among 10,076 works submitted by 3,429 artists to the festival secretariat,” he added.

“A total of 70 artworks from the treasured collection of the TMoCA will also be showcased during the festival,” the festival secretary noted.

A part of the festival is dedicated to distinguished posters designed during the early years of the Islamic Revolution. “Some 97 posters by 27 artists will be displayed in the section titled ‘Mirror in Mirror’,” Abdolhosseini said.

Another section of the festival titled “Masters of the Fine Arts” presents more than 80 works by 55 renowned artists.

Celebrated artists whose works are presented at the festival include Hossein Mahjoubi, Nasser Ovissi, Kazem Chalipa, Habibollah Sadeghi, Nasrollah Afjei, Hossein Khosrowjerdi, Jalal Shabahangi, Morteza Katouzian, and Koorosh Shishegaran among many others.

The 16th Fajr Visual Arts Festival showcases a variety of works including painting, illustration, photography, calligraphy, cartoon and caricature, sculpture, and ceramics.

Other sections of the festival will open on Tuesday at Saba Cultural and Artistic Institute in Tehran and the exhibition of the selected works will be open to the public until February 11, when the winners in the competition section will receive Golden Touba awards,

SS/SAB