Shirazeh Houshiary
(1955 - ) |
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Art Work
| Name: |
Shirazeh Houshiary |
| Gender: |
Female |
| Place of Birth: |
Iran |
| Nationality: |
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| Birth: |
1955 |
| Death: |
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| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
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| Medium: |
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| Method: |
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| Style: |
Minimalism, |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Sculpture
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Biography
In 1985 Shirazeh Houshiary's work was shown in an exhibition of what was labeled 'new British sculpture'. The Poetic Object, held at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, also included Richard Deacon and Anish Kapoor. At the time the three artists were all making their sculptures out of commonplace materials, which they charged with an emotional, spiritual dimension. Writing in the catalogue, Richard Francis drew parallels between their work and that of some modernist writers (the poets W.B. Yeats and William Carlos Williams were quoted) who used juxtapositions of ordinary language (rather than fanciful 'poetic' phrases) to create their poetry.
Houshiary was born in Iran and trained in Britain. She began making sculptures out of clay, straw and wood, before experimenting with welded steel, and then copper, lead, silver, gold and platinum. Houshiary has drawn upon Persian and Sufi sources, such as the writing of the thirteenth-century poet and preacher Julaluddin Rumi, the elegant forms of Arabic calligraphy, and also the intricate geometries of Islamic art. Houshiary was often the only woman to be included under the umbrella of new British sculpture'. This meant that, despite the complexity of her work, it was sometimes read as expressing her femininity. In the catalogue for The Poetic Object, Richard Francis argued that the arch and bridge forms that appeared in her work suggested a reclining body, and signified 'a sexuality perhaps denied by the artist'. By contrast, Kapoor's art was judged to be at its most beautiful 'when the vaginal form is subsumed within the masculine' 'mountain' or ' box-like' form.
Over the last few years, Houshiary has been making paintings. They appear, from a distance, to be monochromes. Moving up to them reveals Sufi incantations inscribed minutely and densely in ghostly traces of graphite and pigment. Houshiary was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1994. |
Samples of Work
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