Katayoun Katayoun Arian
Katayoun Arian is a curator, DJ-archivist, selector, and radio host based in Amsterdam. With a boundless approach to music, she has dedicated herself to uncovering, collecting, and preserving Iranian music from the 1930s to the 1980s, focusing on classical, soulful, and spiritual Persian Avaz, jazz-funk, upbeat funk, and Iranian dance music. Her research project and radio show, Female Vocalists from Iran and Beyond (2018-present), shines a light on various musical connections and 20th-century female singers from Iran, showcasing often overlooked, understudied, and lesser-known music and voices.
She is interested in how we understand diversity and often misuse and neglect the reality and contradictions of displacement as it connects to under-exposed histories and the (de)coloniality of knowledge, being and power. Her background in art history and social science/anthropology coalesces in projects ranging from exhibitions, to organising discursive events, screenings, reading circles, and other forms of interdisciplinary and collaborative work.
Her curatorial projects include The End of This Story (And the beginning of all Others) (2015) and Voices Outside the Echo Chamber (2016) both at Framer Framed in Amsterdam; and I Speak in Tongues (2017) at 37PK in Haarlem. Other curatorial projects include Kitchen139 (2011) and Conversation Circle (2017), both at W139, Amsterdam.
She has worked with several other Dutch contemporary art institutions including Casco (Utrecht), Nieuwe Vide (Haarlem), Framer Framed (Amsterdam), W139 (Amsterdam) and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (Rotterdam). Arian was a fellow at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst (Utrecht) in the fellowship program of 2018/2019 prior to her appointment as a curator at TENT.
Currently, Arian hosts a monthly show on Kiosk Radio called Sonic Imaginaries, where she explores Iranian grooves and their connections to other musical traditions, including Latin music. Her warm, soulful, and dreamlike sets have taken her to various stages, such as supporting Sevdaliza, performing at Lowlands festival, and featuring on My Analog Journal. Arian is also the organizer of Disco Diaspora (2018-present), a multidisciplinary event series that transports the dance floor across different locations, time periods, and musical genres, encouraging audiences to celebrate sonic diversity while shedding light on the socio-political aspects of diasporic cultural expression.
In 2024 she was appointed artistic director of the Other Futures festival in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Installation shot of ‘Voices outside the echo chamber’ (2016). Photo: Michiel Landeweerd / Framer Framed
Exhibitions
Exhibition: Voices Outside the Echo Chamber
Questioning Myths, Facts and Framings of Migration, curated by Katayoun Arian
