Morehshin Allahyari is an artist, activist, educator, and occasional curator.
Born and raised in Iran, Allahyari moved to the United States in 2007. Her work deals with the political, social, and cultural contradictions we face every day. She thinks about technology as a philosophical toolset on objects, poetically documenting our 21st Century personal and collective life struggles.
Morehshin is currently an artist in residence at Eyebeam’s one year Research Residency (2016-2017) in NYC where she is developing a new body of work on Digital Colonialism and ‘re-Figuring’ as a Feminism and de-colonialism practice, using 3D scanners and 3D printers as her tools of investigation. Researching dark goddesses, monstrous, and djinn female figures of Middle-Eastern origin, Allahyari devises a narrative through practices of magic and poetic-speculative storytelling, re-appropriation of traditional mythologies, collaging, meshing, scanning, and archiving.
Her modeled, 3D-printed sculptural reconstructions of ancient artifacts destroyed by ISIS, titled Material Speculation: ISIS, have received widespread curatorial and press attention and have been exhibited worldwide.
Allahyari addresses her 'homelessness' as a third-culture citizen of the world following her self-exile from her homeland, Tehran, through her Romantic Self Exiles I project. She uses mixed media to evoke nostalgia and the five senses.
Allahyari uses She Who Sees The Unknown to raise the voices of those who have been shut down, forgotten, misrepresented, have had suppressed histories and/or narratives. She resituates power and remarks history and ownership through 3D artwork to challenge the Jihadists’ method of declaring authority through flattening earth and destroying historical evidence.
