Morehshin Allahyari
Berkeley, CA
Morehshin Allahyari (Persian: موره شین اللهیاری), is a Bay Area based Iranian-Kurdish artist, using 3D simulation, video, sculpture, and digital fabrication as tools to re-figure myth and history. Through archival practices and storytelling, her work weaves together complex counternarratives in opposition to the lasting influence of Western technological colonialism in the context of MENA (Middle East and North Africa). Morehshin has been part of numerous exhibitions, festivals, and workshops around the world including Venice Biennale di Architettura, New Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Pompidou Center, MoMa, Victoria and Albert Museum, Queens Museum, and Museum of Modern Art, Taipei. She has been an artist in residence at Carnegie Mellon University’s STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Autodesk Pier9 Workshop in San Francisco, the Vilém Flusser Residency Program for Artistic Research in association with Transmediale, Berlin, Eyebeam’s one year Research Residency, Pioneer Works, and Harvest Works. She has been featured in Art21, The New York Times, BBC, Huffington Post, Wired, National Public Radio, Parkett Art Magazine, and Al Jazeera, among others. Morehshin’s work has been the subject of critical analysis across books, academic articles, and dissertation chapters of over 100 publications. She is the recipient of The University of California, Berkeley Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Award (2024), The United States Artist Fellowship (2021), The Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2019), The Sundance Institute New Frontier International Fellowship (2019), and the Leading Global Thinkers of 2016 award by Foreign Policy magazine. Morehshin is an assistant professor of Digital Media Art at Stanford University.
Morehshin Allahyari. The Remaining Signs, 2022-2026. Photographer (cinematographer): Maged Nader
Morehshin Allahyari. The Remaining Signs, 2022-2026. Photographer: Javad Taghizadeh
Morehshin Allahyari. The Remaining Signs, 2022-2026. Photographer (cinematographer): Maged Nader
Morehshin Allahyari. The Remaining Signs, 2022-2026. Photographer (cinematographer): Maged Nader
The Remaining Signs of Future Centuries / نشانه های باقی از سده های آتی
Morehshin Allahyari (Persian: موره شین اللهیاری), is a Bay Area based Iranian-Kurdish artist, using 3D simulation, video, sculpture, and digital fabrication as tools to re-figure myth and history.
Artist BioThe Remaining Signs of Future Centuries / نشانه های باقی از سده های آتی is a multifaceted research-based project that will trace the neglected history of Islamicate science and technology as an anchor point for seeing the people of MENA (Middle East and North Africa), into their own imaginations.
Allahyari’s research will examine innovative devices and ideas of the Islamic Golden Era (7th -15th century) through an anti-colonial feminist queer lens. Optics, clocks, geomantic tablets, celestial objects, and alchemical tools will be paired with female Arab/Iranian historians, scientists, and future-tellers. Through the activation and re-imagination of each tool and its significance, these experts present us with a series of interviews, historical stories, and poetic speculative predictions for profoundly reconsidering a technological past and a future for a region that is living in a dystopian present.
The project proposes to build a case for advocating that technology needs magic, inspired by the scientists and inventors of the Islamicate world who were interested in understanding and building connections to the mysteries of the universe. For example, Ibn Al Haytham, known as the father of Optics, was both a scientist, a poet, and a spiritual practitioner. He did not perceive a fundamental contradiction between empirical observation and metaphysical or spiritual beliefs; In The Remaining Signs, Allahyari wants to offer a poetic proposal: Like the Arab and Persian scientists of the past, we must return and invest in a practice of “progress” through the path of magic and occult; defined as phenomena involving otherworldly agencies.
In addition, the project will explore and build a case for understanding the ways in which the people of MENA engage with futurity in this contemporary moment.