Shirana Shahbazi

An artist who creates painting, photographs, and hand-made carpets, Shirana Shahbazi draws on the art-historical genres of portraiture, still life, and landscape painting. Born in Tehran, but living and working in Zurich, Shahbazi uses her work to explore the complexity and nuance of the immigrant experience, and to reflect on the various ways in which cultures manifest themselves. Often printing her photographs in different sizes, and changing the way they are arranged each time they are shown, Shahbazi infuses her work with a nomadic and transient quality even on the broadest level, reflecting the way that she sees her own place in the world. Once her work is finished, Shahbazi often calls on others to reimagine it, having carpet weavers in Tehran weave small carpet versions of her work, or asking commercial painters to reimagine her imagery. Shahbazi was selected as an artist in residence for the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.