Morehshin
Allahyari
She // Her // Hers
[ID: Morehshin, a young Iranian woman with straight dark hair, sits on a staircase. She is wearing a black leather dress with silver and black earrings.]
Brooklyn, NY
2021 USA Fellow
This award was generously supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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Morehshin Allahyari (Persian: موره شین اللهیاری; b. 1985) is an Iranian-Kurdish media artist, activist, and writer based in Brooklyn. Allahyari uses computer modeling, 3D scanning, and digital fabrication techniques to explore the intersection of art and activism. Inspired by concepts of collective archiving and cultural contradiction, she creates 3D-printed sculptures and videos that challenge social and gender norms. She wants her work to respond to, resist, and criticize the current political and cultural situation experienced on a daily basis.
Her work has been part of numerous exhibitions, festivals, and workshops at venues throughout the world, including the New Museum, MoMa, Centre Pompidou, Venice Biennale di Architettura, and Museum für angewandte Kunst. She is the recipient of the 2019 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, the Sundance Institute’s New Frontier International Fellowship, and Foreign Policy magazine’s 2016 Leading Global Thinkers award. Allahyari’s video 3D Additivist Manifesto is in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and she was recently awarded major commissions by the Shed, Rhizome, New Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Liverpool Biennial, and FACT.
Portrait photo by Prince Harvey.
She Who Sees The Unknown: Aisha Qandisha, 2019. Installation with 3D-printed resin sculpture, reflecting pool, and HD video. Photo by Don Hall.[ID: A white 3D mold of a feminine humanoid with their head split into two faces, billowing hair, broad curved hips, large hooves, and fluid tentacles. The mold sits on a red, translucent display in front of a projection.]
She Who Sees the Unknown: Kabous, The Right Witness, and the Left Witness, 2019. Installation with 3D-printed resin sculptures and VR video. Photo by Dan Bradica; image courtesy the artist and The Shed, New York City.[ID: A person lies on their back on a bed in a dark gallery wearing blocky virtual reality goggles. Stantions rope off the bed, and two small puppets and frames float around them.]