exhibition

Shirana Shahbazi: New Commission

Shirana Shahbazi

04.Oct.07 - 20.Jan.08
Daily 11-8, Tue, Thu 11-6

Barbican Art Gallery
Barbican Centre
London EC2Y 8DS
0845 121 6826
artinfo@barbican.org.uk
www.barbican.org.uk/gallery
Tube Barbican, St Paul's, Moorgate, City / Barbican

An ambitious new installation by Iranian born, Zurich based artist Shirana Shahbazi combines imagery from various genres of art, which she reproduces in dramatic wall paintings and digital photographic prints mounted on the 80 metre long wall of The Curve. Trained as a photographer, Shahbazi shoots images—including portraits, still lifes and landscapes—and often uses them as source material not only for photographs but also for paintings, billboards and handmade carpets. By altering the scale and transposing the imagery into a new medium or a style associated with another culture, she subverts viewers’ expectations and explores the complexity of identity.

For her project in The Curve, Shahbazi collaborates with a team of Iranian billboard painters, employing techniques and styles typically used for commercial advertising in her native country.

A book accompanies this exhibition, published by JRP Ringier, in association with the Swiss Institute, New York and the Barbican Art Gallery, London. Lavishly illustrated, the book focuses on Shirana Shahbazi’s photographic works with essays by Kate Bush, Head of Barbican Art Galleries and Gianni Jetzer, Director of the Swiss Institute in New York, and an interview with the artist by Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, Senior Editor Parkett Magazine.