art.wikisort.org - Artist

Morehshin Allahyari (Persian: موره شین اللهیاری; born 1985) is an Iranian media artist, activist, and writer, based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work questions current political, socio-cultural, and gender norms, with a particular emphasis on exploring the relationship between technology, history, and art activism. Allahyari’s artworks include 3D-printed objects, video, experimental animation, web art, and publications. She is most noted for her projects Material Speculation: ISIS (2016), which is a series of 3D-printed sculptural reconstructions of ancient artifacts destroyed by ISIS (2015–2016), She Who Sees The Unknown,[1] The 3D Additivist Manifesto and Cookbook (2015–2016).[2] As a 2017 Research Resident at Eyebeam, Allahyari also worked on the concept of Digital Colonialism;[3][4] a term she has coined since 2015.[5]

Morehshin Allahyari
موره شین اللهیاری
Born	Morehshin Allahyari 1985 (age 36–37) Tehran, Iran
Nationality	Iranian
Alma mater	University of Tehran University of Denver University of North Texas
Known for	3D Printing, New Media Art, Additivism
Notable work	Material Speculation: ISIS
Movement	Conceptual, Additivism, New Media Art
Website	http://www.morehshin.com/

Early life

Allahyari was born and raised in Tehran, Iran, during the Iran-Iraq War.[6] She took an interest in the arts from a young age. At age 12, she joined a private creative writing course, where she learned about the importance of telling personal narratives. This group continued until she was 18 and became a launching point for the rest of her work.[7] Allahyari attended the University of Tehran from 2003 until 2007 and was awarded her Bachelor of Arts, in Social Science and Media Studies.^{[citation needed]} She moved to the United States in 2007 and from then until 2009 she attended the University of Denver and received a Master of Arts in Digital Media Studies.[8] From 2010 until 2012 Allahyari attended the University of North Texas and was awarded a Master of Fine Arts in New Media Art.[9]^{[non-primary source needed]} Allahyari currently resides in New York.[10]

Selected work

She Who Sees the Unknown

She Who Sees the Unknown (2017–2020) is a long-term research based project that uses 3D modeling, 3D scanning, 3D printing, and storytelling to re-create monstrous female/queer figures of Middle Eastern origin, using the traditions and myths associated with them to explore the catastrophes of colonialism, patriarchism and environmental degradation.[11] This body of work has many components to it: an archive of the female/genderless monstrous and jinn figures with related research and materials, as well as installations, text, video, and the 3D printed sculptures of the chosen figures.[12] Two of the jinn sculptures are Huma and Ya'jooj Ma'jooj. Allahyari describes this work as actions that "offer another method to re-situate power,” she told The Verge in an article, by Lizzie Plaugic, "Through researching dark goddesses, monstrous, and jinn female figures of Middle Eastern origin, poetic-speculative storytelling, re-appropriation of traditional mythologies, collaging, meshing, 3D scanning, 3D printing, and archiving."

She Who Sees the Unknown has been shown at Transfer Gallery, Hartware Media Art Association, The Shed, the New York Armory,[13] Moscow Museum of Modern Art,[14] New Museum, The Ford Foundation Gallery, among others.

The Laughing Snake

In continuance with themes of all-powerful feminine and queer jinn from Arab mythology, Allahyari debuted "The Laughing Snake" (2018), a web project co-commissioned by The Whitney Museum, Liverpool Biennale, and FACT.[15] The resultant work is an interactive browser-based experience consisting of hyperlinked poetry, soundscapes and 3D animations hosted on Whitney Museum's Artnet portal.[16] The work uses the myth of a jinn to explore the status of women, sexual desire, and the female body in the Middle East. According to the original myth appearing in the fourteenth and fifteenth-century Arabic manuscript Kitab al-bulhan (Book of Wonders), the Laughing Snake had taken over a city, murdering its people and animals while numerous attempts to kill her remained unsuccessful. An old man finally destroyed the snake by holding up a mirror to her, which made her laugh so hard at her reflection that she died. Using images of the snake and the mirror, Allahyari takes us through a labyrinthine online narrative that mixes personal and imagined stories to address topics such as femininity, sexual abuse, morality, and hysteria. The snake emerges as a complex figure, reflecting multifaceted and sometimes distorted views of the female, and refracting images of otherness and monstrosity.[17]

Material Speculation: ISIS

Material Speculation is a project that is a combination of digital fabrication and 3D printing that "inspects Petropolitical and poetic relationships between 3D Printing, Plastic, Oil, Technocapitalism and Jihad".[18] Part of a group exhibition at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The Missing: Rebuilding the Past, artists use creative means to protest "preventable loss" from destruction in conflict zones in Iraq and Syria.[19] From 2015 to 2016, Allahyari recreated twelve artifacts, all which were original and were destroyed by ISIS in 2015 at Mosul Museum.[20][21] Inside of each artifact there is a USB drive and/or memory card containing all of the research she conducted on the topic, including images, maps, videos, and PDF files. Other artists in the exhibit provide evidence of the violence seen in war, but Allahyari's pieces are indicative of a look towards the future. She is "seeking an institution that is able to preserve the data in a digital archive to provide open access to all this information so others may construct their own 3D models. To her, even that act would be one of resistance".[19] She is creating, through 3D modeling and printing, some of the artifacts destroyed by ISIS.[22]

In early 2016, Allahyari published one of her reconstructions from Material Speculation: ISIS, as well as a dossier of her research, as part of Rhizome's series The Download.[23] Through this commission, her object file for King Uthal was made openly available to anyone for 3D printing. She collaborated with Browntourage[24] to create a virtual tour of 3D prints from the Material Speculation series, PRINT your REALITY. Users touring the virtual gallery may examine the 3D images by rotating them and watch the artist respond to questions about her work.[25]

This body of work received attention from current news outlets such as Vice's Creators Project,[26] Vice's Motherboard,[27][28] AJ+,[29] CBC,[30] Huffington Post,[31] New York Times, and Wired among many others.[32]

Dark Matter

First series (2014)

Allahyari's first series of Dark Matter casts a critical gaze on her home country and their censorship practices.[33] Using 3D printing, Allahyari makes objects that either forbidden in her country or unwelcome by the Iranian government. Dark Matter is a "series of scathing and critical sculptural objects which she models in Maya and 3D prints. Their often humorous juxtapositions highlight ideas forbidden or frowned upon by the current Iranian government".[33] Objects include a dog, a dildo, a satellite dish, a Barbie, a VHS tape, a pig, a gun, Buddha, and Homer Simpson.[34] Allahyari describes this piece, saying, "I want to simultaneously resist and bring awareness about the power that constantly threatens, discourages, and actively works against the ownership of these items in Iran".[34]

Second series (2014–2015)

The second series of Dark Matter was commissioned by Forever Now to be gifted to NASA to be taken to the International Space Station.[35] "Dark Matter (Second Series)" consists of 3D printed objects that are considered to be socially or culturally unwelcome, particularly in Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea.[36] Of this iteration of Dark Matter, Allahyari states, "Dark Matter is intended to serve as a documentation of the lives we currently live as humans; the dark side, the invisible, the Dystopian lives that a minority (power/government) has created for a majority (people). I am interested in the idea of re-contextualizing and re-positioning these forbidden objects to another time/space".[36] On November 11, 2014, Allahyari discussed her work as art in relation to astronomy with Roger Malina on Creative Disturbance as part of the countdown to the 100th anniversary of birth of Frank Malina.[37]

The 3D Additivist Manifesto and Cookbook (2016)

The 3D Additivist Cookbook,[38] co-devised and edited with Daniel Rourke, is a free 3D PDF compendium of imaginative, provocative works from over 100 world-leading “artists, designers, curators, students, activists and theorist. Released in December, 2016, the works in the Cookbook are a coalescence of recipes, fictions, critical essays, .obj and .stl files, toolkits, templates, blueprints, and methodologies.

Prior to the release of the Cookbook, Allahyari and Rourke released the 3D Additivist Manifesto in March 2015 as a call to push the 3D printer and other creative technologies to their absolute limits and beyond the realm of the speculative. The Manifesto contains a call to action with 16 points of intended mobilizations for the revolution. The 3D Additivist Cookbook came as a response to the Manifesto’s call for Creation as a violent assault on the forces of matter. Allahyari & Rourke’s aim for the Cookbook is not only the expansion of the limits of the 3D printer, but to also the extraction of the raw potential of its machinery.[39]

A portmanteau of additive and activism, #Additivism is a conflation that defines a movement intent on disrupting material, social, computational, and metaphysical realities through provocation, collaboration and science fictional thinking.[40]

Residencies, recognition, and awards

• BANFF Film and Media Residency (2013)
• Resident at Gray Area Art and Technology, San Francisco, CA (2014)[41]
• Resident at SculpCad, 3D Software and Printing Residency, Dallas, Texas (2014)[42]
• Special Award at the Florence Biennale (2015)[43]
• Autodesk artist in residency, for Material Speculation: ISIS (2015)[44]
• Resident at The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Carnegie Mellon University, (2015)[45]
• Resident with AUTODESK’s Pier9 Art Program (3D printing + sculpture), (2015)[46]
• Recipient of Vilém Flusser Residency Program for Artistic Research in association with Transmediale, an annual award through the Transmediale festival for art and digital culture in the German capital. (2016)[47]
• Recipient of the Leading Global thinkers of 2016 award by Foreign Policy Magazine (2016) [48]
• Research Fellowship at Eyebeam for "She Who Sees The Unknown", centered on digital colonialism and Re-Figuring of dark goddesses, female Jinns, and monstrous figures of ancient Near East. (2016-2017)[49]
• Digital Sculpture Award, The Institute of Digital Art, Germany (2016).[50]
• Sundance Institute New Frontier International Fellowship (2019)[51]
• The Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2019). [52]
• The United States Artist Fellowship, 2021. [53]

References

Further reading

• Louw, Gretta (February 15, 2016). ""Your Shiny Plastic Future Is a Load of Crap": Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke's #Additivism". Hyperallergic.
• Denson, G. Roger (24 November 2016). "Carolee Schneemann, Jackie Brookner and Morehshin Allahyari Channel the Feminence of the World". HuffPost. Retrieved 20 September 2018.
• Sofia Pirandello. “Interview with Morehshin Allahyari.” piano b 6.1 (2022): M1–M7. Web.

External links

• Official website

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