Shadi Harouni

Critical text

Shadi Harouni (b. 1985, Hamedan) is an Iranian artist whose practice ranges from site-specific interventions and sculptures, to printmaking, photography, film, and writing. Her research is centred on marginalised, erased and forgotten histories of dissent and resistance, specifically in the Middle East. Focusing on the history of her native Iran, she investigates universal conditions of loss, oppression, opposition and frailty. Harouni’s practice brings into light marginalised stories, contested bodies, forbidden objects, and obliterated spaces, questioning the way in which history is manipulated by power structures. The body of works presented on the occasion of Present Future speak about the existing relationship between hope and loss, and memory and concealment, interrogating the site of the monument, if not its very function. The pieces evoke people and landscapes, individual narratives, and real experiences, which spark stories that stretch from the intimate to the universal. The political and the poetical collide to bring to the surface erased episodes, prevented memories, and acts of resistance, as a way to give voice to the marginalised, and to contribute to the re-writing of history.

Text by Fernanda Brenner, Ilaria Gianni