Shirana Shahbazi – Art Papers – September 2010

Shirana Shahbazi, Eleftherotypia, Issue No. 437, 3/4/10, by Paris Spirou

Shirana Shahbazi ,BHMAdonna, Issue 97, April 2010, by Marilena Astrapellou

Shirana Shahbazi

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Shirana Shahbazi, Composing Composition, Profile by Stephanie Bailey, Canvas

Magazine, January 2012

COMPO SING

Through the incorporation of classic motifs

of still life

, portraiture and landscape, Shirana Shahbazi tra

nsforms

a conceptual approach to Contemporary photography into a modern form of mechanised painting.

Stephanie Bailey writes on how the artist

’s hand is replaced with an objective, analytical eye.

COMPO SINGCOMPOSITION

Through the incorporation of classic motifs

of still life

, portraiture and landscape, Shirana Shahbazi tra

nsforms

a conceptual approach to Contemporary photography into a modern form of mechanised painting.

Stephanie Bailey writes on how the artist

’s hand is replaced with an objective, analytical eye.

SHIRANA SHAHBAZI

108

pRofIle

Before meeting Shirana Shahbazi at Art Basel 42, I search for

influences in her works by Alain fleischer, Thomas Ruff and Tho-

mas Struth, from historic photo-experimentations by Brassai and lazlo Moholy-Nagy to Richard

prince’s non-photographic work and Robert longo’s photo-realist charcoal on paper works. I think of

Shahbazi’s wall installation in the New Museum lobby, a classic example of the artist’s extensive

Flowers, Fruits and Portraits series.

I come across two characteristic Shahbazi C-prints at Galerie Bob von orsouw’s booth. The rich,

pop colours of abstract Komposition-09-2011 are paired with Voegel-09-2009, a black-and-white

image of a bird in flight. The works resemble the placement of Objekt-07-2010 and Joshua Tree-01-

2008 in the solo exhibition Reverse Order at The Breeder, Athens, in 2010. This time, a black-and-yellow

abstract piece was placed against the black-and-white image of a desert boulder, evoking Ansel

Adams and early nature photography. Both pairings objectively represent irreconcilable dualities

and unresolved tensions beneath superficial exteriors in an investigation of the image and what it

communicates. I wonder if Shahbazi will be a reflection of her work.

THe IMAGe ANd THe WoRd“I didn’t decide to be an artist, I think I wanted to be a journalist,” Shahbazi recalls, as we settle down to

a discussion amidst the buzz of art talk surrounding the Messeplatz. This might explain why, in 2000,

Shahbazi founded the historically inclined Shahrzad Collective alongside art theorist and cultural critic

Tirdad Zolghadr and designer Manuel Krebs, an outlet where she could play with her ideas – and words –

109

Opening spread: (Detail)[Komposition-09-2011]. 2011. C-print. Variable dimensions.

This page:Far left: (Detail) [Stilleben-26-2008] From the series Flowers, Fruits & Portraits. 2008. C-print. Variable dimensions.

Left: [Objekt-07-2010] from the series Flowers, Fruits & Portraits. 2010. C-print. Variable dimensions.

more freely. Yet, having grown up with an architect

father and two artist sisters, Shahbazi accepts it

was no accident she studied photography and

design at the fachhochschule dortmund and

later at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst,

Zurich, a city she now calls her base.

As Magritte apparently painted only because

he couldn’t write, there is a writer in Shahbazi

that asks: “What can a photograph be? How can

you read it? How much can you lead the viewer

to get to the point where they absorb all the in-

formation you are giving to them? I think a lot

about the interaction between my work and the

viewer,” she says. “My work is like a slogan.”

It is interesting that Shahbazi refers to im-

ages as slogans, especially when she talks about

the impact of arriving in Germany from Tehran in

1985 at age 11. “My first memories of Germany

are dominated by the fact that I did not under-

stand anything. We arrived during the summer

holidays. Straight after, we entered school with-

out speaking a single word of German. I was

just sitting in the classroom and watching,” she

recalls. In this context, looking at Shahbazi’s many

wall installations, from her participation in the

exhibition, Delays and Revolutions, curated by

francesco Bonami and daniel Birnbaum for the

2003 Venice Biennale and the Barbican Curve

in 2008, the repositioning of recurring motifs

suggests a visual vocabulary.

In her New York triple show debut at Salon

94, Trans>Area and the Wrong Gallery in 2004,

Shahbazi’s dictionary is out in full force, in a

fragmented presentation across three different

venues; from the staging of her characteristic

still-life photography that is turned into hand-

made decorative wall hangings by Iranian crafts-

men and billboard paintings by Iranian billboard

painters. Alongside her more characteristic

work were travel photographs from China, the

USA and Iran, reflecting the sense of displace-

ment evoked in the very curation of Shahbazi’s

work over those different venues. As art critic

Roberta Smith noted on that 2004 debut, Shah-

bazi treats her photographs as “words used in

different sentences or translated into entirely

different languages”, in an oeuvre that is in a state

of parallel cultural flux.

pRofIle

“I was forgetting that the topic of being Iranian was way heavier, way stronger than anything else.”

CUlTURe ANd AppRopRIATIoNCould her early experiences coming to Germany

have influenced a linguistic angle to photogra-

phy in those early days, I ask. “I keep it open to

using [the photographs] differently and that’s

what [Smith] means when she talks about words,”

replies Shahbazi. But on her 2004 New York de-

but at Salon 94, she makes one addition. She

employed Iranian crafsmen to weave prayer rugs

which replicate her photographic images: “They

are not prayer rugs, though there are numerous

references that say that,” insists the artist. “They are

wall hangings. In Iran, when you have a rug with

a picture on it, it is totally decorative and for the

wall.” Her annoyance is palpable. It might relate to

the moment Shahbazi claimed the Citigroup pho-

tography prize in 2002 at age 27, with the Goftare

Nik (Good Words) series (2000–01). Using Iran as a

subject through the language of travel photogra-

phy, Shahbazi copied images one might expect to

see in Iran – a street scene, a soldier in the desert,

a mother and child – whose image was re-painted

by an Iranian billboard painter. “At first view [the

series] was read as the ‘New Iran’, which was not

my point at all,” Shahbazi said in an interview at the

Hammer Museum in 2009. “for me, [Goftare/Nik

(Good Words)] is close to the photographic work

I am doing now but it was far too complex. I was

forgetting that the topic of being Iranian was way

heavier, way stronger than anything else, so I really

had to take a complete distance. I pretty much re-

duced [the work] down to what it is now, so that it

could become more focused but at the same time

more open.”

Indeed, if Shahbazi is hard to pin down, it is

because she refuses to be defined by stereotypi-

cal reductions, where a single person or artwork

could stand for an entire people. This might

explain her interest in the reversal of everyday

objects and stylised portraits through mate-

rial and production. Shahbazi is, after all, a child

who grew up in an Iranian home and German

society concurrently, something that has no

doubt influenced her approach to the idea of

perspectives, particularly in a globally connected

world in which culture is at once heterogene-

111

pRofIle

Facing page: Meninas I and Meninas II. 2006. Iron. 124 x 90x 38 cm-- and 90 x 65 x 27 cm, respectively. Image courtesy Rose Issa Projects, London.

Below: With Wings. 2004. Ink on paper. 120 x 300 cm.

ous and homogenous. on the influence of Iran

in her work, she explains: “There are also ele-

ments that don’t come from Iran and people

often forget to mention those. I’m not denying

the fact that I am Iranian. But it also goes to prac-

tical reasons. I go to Iran once a year. I see these

carpets and I am fascinated by how these pictures

are made. So I use this in my work. for example, at

Salon 94, the photograph depicting a portrait of a

woman was paired with a detailed reproduction of

a handmade rug made by Iranian craftsmen which

replicated the same image took around eight

months to make.”

INSISTeNCe ANd RepeTITIoN Thus, as Shahbazi was subject to singular and re-

petitive readings as an Iranian artist, her own im-

ages reduce Western art history into objects iso-

lated against monochromatic backgrounds like

logos. But as she mentions the exhibition of the

Goftare Nik (Good Words) series at the fotomu-

seum Winterthur in 2011, it seems Shahbazi has

effectively neutralised her Iranian origins in her

work as an artist. “When I started my thesis work

“My work probably doesn’t look as heterogenic as it used to a couple of years ago, but no matter if I take a landscape picture or a portrait, it is a lot about this gesture of taking those decisions.”

Facing page: Above: [Gitarre-01-2009] from the series Flowers, Fruits & Portraits. 2009. Gelatin silver print on aluminium. Variable dimensions.

Below: (Detail) [Voegel-09-2009] from the series Flowers, Fruits & Portraits. 2008. C-print on aluminium. Variable dimensions.

Right: [JoshuaTree-01-2008] from the series Flowers, Fruits & Portraits. 2008. C-print. Variable dimensions.

112

pRofIle

“When you get close to it, the picture kind of vanishes.”

113

in Iran, it was very much connected to the same

questions and topics I’m using now. It just looks

very different. It’s almost ridiculous; I’m turning

around the same questions for 10 years, but at the

same time it’s hard to bring the work together,”

she says.

In this context, it is useful to mention Kim

Schoen’s use of Gertude Stein’s linguistic inves-

tigations into portraiture as useful in looking at

Shahbazi’s photographic work. Referring to Stein’s

distinction between repetition and insistence,

when insistence attests to the active presence

and vitality of a person acting upon his or her en-

vironment, Schoen continues, “Every emphasis in

utterance is different, every utterance attests to

ingenuity and difference, even though the topic

may stay the same. In fact, there can be no rep-

etition if there is insistence.” The insistence itself is

an act that relates to the observer, the observed,

the image and the image-maker, each role given

equal measures of responsibility. “My work prob-

ably doesn’t look as heterogenic as it used to a

couple of years ago, but no matter if I take a

landscape picture or a portrait, it is a lot about

this gesture of taking those decisions,” Shahbazi

elaborates. “It’s a lot of repetition and how to build

up these pictures. I repeat myself with the objects,

subjects and portraits, but also in the gesture of

taking these pictures.”

On the viewer’s part, one is expected to

work as hard as the photographer when deci-

phering Shahbazi’s visual codes. Reviewing her

exhibition, meanwhile, at the Swiss Institute,

New York in 2007, Ben Davis observed “a keen

sense of alienation from images in the works of

Shirana Shahbazi… casual viewers might not

get that much out of them on their own.” Indeed,

Shahbazi’s controlled compositional approach

both resists the viewer’s gaze and challenges en-

gagement. When I ask if extensive referencing in

Shahbazi’s work purposefully creates a distance,

she replies: “I have the impression that the work

liberates itself at some point from those clear ref-

erences. For me it’s like a starting point. Of cour

se, I use images like the skull because it is such a

loaded topic. But when it appears on a pink back-

ground, the picture becomes contradictory.”

Thinking back to Komposition-09-2011 and

Voegel-09-2009 at Art Basel, the pairing expresses

Facing page: [Komposition-2011]. 2011. C-print on aluminium. Variable dimensions.

This page: Above: (Detail) [Objekt-18-2010] from the series Flowers, Fruits & Portraits. 2010. C-print on aluminium with a map. Variable dimensions.

Below: [Schaedel-1]. 2011. Mixed media wall painting. Variable dimensions. Photography by Christian Schwager.

All images courtesy The Breeder, Athens and Galerie Bob van Orsouw, Zurich unless otherwise specified.

liberation from an attempt at defining an image as

a symbol or icon. “For instance, when I blow up a

photograph of a butterfly, I’m not interested in the

butterfly as a symbol. You can see all the details,”

Shahbazi explains. “The same thing happens with

the carpets, the silk-screens and the grain of the

photographs. When you get close to it, the picture

kind of vanishes.” As one might view an oil painting

from afar first to see the image and then move clos-

er to witness the materiality and technique, Shah-

bazi implores viewers to get closer to the medium

of representation and understand a contradictory

language that teeters between reality and fantasy.

The result is a neutralisation of polarised situations,

in which images that at first appear simple, are in

fact complex, multifaceted and, above all, unique.

Much like Shahbazi herself.

For more information visit www.thebreedersystem.com and www.bobvanorsouw.ch

Shirana  Shahbazi,  “I  am  an  image”,  Frieze  magazine,  Issue  113,  March  2008,  by  Christy  Lange.    

 

         

Shirana  Shahbazi,  “I  am  an  image”,  Frieze  magazine,  Issue  113,  March  2008,  by  Christy  Lange.    

 

 

   

Shirana  Shahbazi,  “I  am  an  image”,  Frieze  magazine,  Issue  113,  March  2008,  by  Christy  Lange.    

 

         

Shirana  Shahbazi,  “I  am  an  image”,  Frieze  magazine,  Issue  113,  March  2008,  by  Christy  Lange.    

 

       

Shirana  Shahbazi,  “I  am  an  image”,  Frieze  magazine,  Issue  113,  March  2008,  by  Christy  Lange.