The Iranian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Kamrooz Aram makes work rooted in the history of art and design. His interdisciplinary practice, which includes painting, photography, sculpture, and collage, questions the distinctions between high art and design, and engages in a dialogue surrounding the differing, hierarchical ways in which art history has handled Western and Eastern artistic traditions. Often combining sculptural and painting elements in individual works, Aram manipulates exhibition design as a medium unto itself with methods such as painting gallery walls or placing decorative objects in front of his paintings that then become part of the work, thus intervening in the architecture of the exhibition space itself. By altering the traditional white-cube viewing experience, Aram challenges the notion that such spaces are neutral arbiters of cultural objects. Aram’s work can be found in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Sharjah Art Foundation, and the M+ Museum in Hong Kong, among other collections and institutions.