Shirazeh Houshiary

Dates: b.1955

Gender: Female

‘I set out to capture my breath, to find the essence of my own existence, transcending name, nationality, cultures.’
Shirazeh Houshiary, 2000 Read more…

Biography:

‘I set out to capture my breath, to find the essence of my own existence, transcending name, nationality, cultures.’
Shirazeh Houshiary, 2000

Born in Shiraz, Iran the artist has lived and worked in the United Kingdom since 1976 when she began her studies at Chelsea School of Art. She was identified with other young sculptors who came of age in the 1980’s such as Richard Deacon and Anish Kapoor, though her voice was distinctive from her contemporaries for both its Persian and Sufi (especially Rumi) influences.

‘Houshiary's paintings are elusive, barely visible, and they change in our vision over time – they refuse to be frozen into a finite moment, of the kind that could be captured by a camera. They intentionally stand at the very edge of perception, the signs both emerging from nothingness and simultaneously melting back into it. Yet these paintings painstakingly record a process of obstinate mark making, of personal gestures inscribing time, of checking the pressure of one's presence, the precision of one's vision, against the resistant surface.’ (Fereshteh Daftari, ‘Beyond Islamic roots – beyond Modernism’, Res 43, Spring 2003: Islamic Arts.)

Major group exhibitions include Centre George Pompidou, MOMA in New York and The Museum Modern Art, Oxford. She participated in the Venice Biennale (1982), The XXIII Bienal de Sao Paulo and the Skulptur Biennial Munsterland (2003). Houshiary was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994.