Shirana Shahbazi Livres

Iranian artist takes a conceptual approach to photography. Images of reality and how they are 'read'. Photographs from in and around Teheran.Shahbazi seeks the foreign in familiar images

As in the Shahrzad collective's preceding projects, matters of geopolitical aesthetics are explored through idiosyncratic linkages of metonymy and allegory, textual poetics and iconic image, blunt content and overbearing design. * * Now, with their newest publication, the focus is on the mise-en-scène of contemporary historiography in today's Euroamerica. In the words of the collective: "These days, it seems that even in those prosperous, provincial environs we call the West, history is becoming a more complex affair than the Eurocentric teleology of 'how we ended up the joyous pinnacle of civilization, happy as pigs in shit.' History, along with other officious narratives, is now widely consumed with the same deference as a soap opera or a fashion magazine. And yet, throughout this apparent free-for-all, History as we know it persists.„ * * With this sourcebook at hand, Shahrzad presents its own commentary on the mysteriously tenacious aura of institutionalized histories, drawing on baroque ideology, discourse theory, botanics, the US top ten, art book traditions and more. * * Published and edited by Shahrzad (Shirana Shahbazi, Manuel Krebs, Tirdad Zolghadr) in collaboration with Emily Cohn-Miller. * * Awarded in the competition “The most beautiful Swiss books 2005."

“Photography is always suspended between authenticity, construction and selection … a balancing act that is, to me, its quintessential justification as an artistic medium” Shirana Shahbazi Shirana Shahbazi adopts different approaches to photography in her work and explores genres as varied as the vanitas still-life, portraiture, landscape and colour abstraction. Shahbazi is just as mobile in her choice of media, for example commissioning carpet makers in her native Iran and billboard painters to copy her images. Often employing the slick look of commercial photography, Shahbazi’s images are bright and accessible, yet at heart dispassionate and sceptical. Shirana Shahbazi was born in Tehran in 1974, moved to Germany in 1985 and today lives in Zurich. Shahbazi studied photography and design at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Dortmund and at Zurich University of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited at venues including the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva, Barbican Art Gallery in London and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

Diese Publikation erscheint anlässlich der Ausstellung „MIR, Shirana Shahbazi“, Sprengel Museum Hannover, Intervention 40: 1. März bis 14. Mai 2006 /Raum für Fotografie: 1. März bis 25. Juni 2006.

Der Band gibt einen Überblick über Shahbazis Arbeiten aus den letzten fünf Jahren. Er versammelt Auszüge aus den verschiedenen Werkgruppen sowie bisher nicht gezeigte Bilder. Dabei erscheinen die einzelnen Fotografi-en in einer neuen Anordnung, nämlich sortiert nach Genres (Porträts, Landschaften, Stilleben) und Figuren (Mutter & Kind, Städte, Vögel etc.). Diese Kategorien wiederum werden in kurzen Essays von Autoren aus kunst- und kulturgeschichtlicher Perspektive erörtert. Er-gänzend umfasst dieser Band auch Informationen und Überlegungen zur Ausstellungspraxis der Künstlerin.

Die Künstlerin Shirana Shahbazi besuchte über eine Zeit von 12 Monaten das Konferenz- und Ausbildungszentrum einer Schweizer Rückversicherungsgesellschaft. Systematisch deckt sie in der entstandenen Arbeit Themenumfelder ab, die weit über den Ort und die porträtierten Personen hinausgehen und vermischt und kombiniert in der Fotografie die Genres der klassischen Malerei.