Shirana Shahbazi

Over the course of her artistic career, Shirana Shahbazi has developed a unique approach to the medium of photography and her ambiguous images invite the viewers to analyse the various facets of photography. Shahbazi embraces fundamental attributes that make the photographic image so fascinating up to the present day: its precision in the representation of reality as well as its capacity of capturing the ephemeral moment.

By applying the full range of analogue reproduction techniques from Ekta chrome to silkscreen print, Shahbazi composes abstract pictorial spaces that are distinguished by vibrant colors, on the one hand, and by sharp black and white contrasts, on the other. Yet she also portrays people and places that she encounters by chance or deliberately orchestrates with the same compositional precision. Her visual scope is cosmopolitan, from her travels through Europa, from Japan to India or Iran. In the treatment of light, space, and structure, her partially large-format works are often conceptually closer to painting than to photography.

The exhibition space itself is an important element in the oeuvre of Shahbazi: her exhibitions are accurately installed with interventions such as wall paintings and color fields, photographic posters or most recently with ceramic surfaces.

In 2019, she was awarded the Prix Meret Oppenheim, Switzerland’s most prestigious award for visual arts; and in 2022, she received the Mutina Art Prize. Shahbazi is a guest lecturer in the Master of Fine Arts program at the ZHdK, Zurich and EPFL, Lausanne. In 2016, she co-founded the Institute New Switzerland (INES), which aims to make diversity and multiple affiliations in Switzerland visible. Together with Manuel Krebs, she has published various artist books and monographs.

Shahbazi is known for her architectural installations. In 2015, she was involved in the renovation project of the headquarters of the Zürcher Kantonalbank, and in 2017 she created an intervention for the design of the office of the Axel Springer branch. A new site specific art in architecture project is planned for the new Swiss Life Bannhof, which will open on Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse in the Fall of 2023.

Shirana Shahbazi’s works are found in the collections of major institutions worldwide, including the Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fotomuseum Winterthur; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Tate Modern, London; National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen; Sprengel Museum, Hannover among others. Important solo exhibitions include (selection): Kunsthaus Hamburg (2018); Istituto Svizzero, Milan (2018); Museum Fotogalleriet, Oslo (2017); KINDL, Berlin (2017); Camera Austria, Graz (2016) and Kunsthalle, Bern (2014). Major group exhibitions in recent years include (selection): "Now", Brooklyn Museum (2022); "Images", Vevey (2022), "Smoke and Mirrors", Kunsthaus Zürich (2020) and Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2021); "Niko Pirosmani", Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, Arles (2019); Swiss Pavilion: House Tour, 16th International Architecture Biennale, Venice (2018); and "The Other and Me", Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah (2014).

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