Born: 1961 Tehran, Iran
Year of Migration to the UK: 1985
Biography
Artist Zory Shahrokhi was born in southeast Tehran, Iran, in 1961, later immigrating to the UK after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, where she studied art at London Metropolitan University and the University of Hertfordshire. She recalled witnessing ‘pure poverty’ in her childhood and, in a 2019 interview, remembered that her brothers were able to go out and enjoy a degree of personal freedom that was not available to her. Shahrokhi commented: ‘I was like a prisoner in my childhood.’ In 1985, when she migrated to the UK, she described her experience as ‘homeless, degrading, hunger. So I wanted to reflect my experience as a refugee’ (Ben Uri schools’ discussion sheet on Migration, 2019).
Concerned with cultural and political agendas, she employs performance in her practice, along with installation and photography, utilising a wide range of media processes, as well as sculpture and time-based imagery. She works with abstract representations of the human body to communicate literally and metaphorically, using domestic objects such as safety pins, spoons, cloth, rose blossoms, and hair. While her artistic expression is influenced by her background, it is also concerned with more universal issues around the contemporary human condition and breaches in human rights. Shahrokhi says of her work: ‘I grew up in Iran and as a result my work is strongly influenced by Persian poetry, fabric and rug design. When still I was a teenager – a couple of years after the 1979 revolution – I lost almost all the people dear to me. They were imprisoned, missing or executed due the government’s crackdown on the opposition. The traces of those events are reflected in my work. I experiment with traditional art techniques combined with new technology while through abstract expression practice I investigate issues and perceptions around freedom related to displacement, exploitation, and gender oppression. Experiencing the dehumanisation of refugees and the ongoing struggle to be part of this society naturally is part of my work.’ (Traces online project).
In 2019 she produced a pair of works on paper, both entitled Revolution Street 2, in reponse to a Ben Uri commission, in response to the 2018 exhibition Liberators; Extraordinary Women from the Ben Uri Collection, supported by the Association of Jewish Refugees. The exhibition commemorated the challenges faced by 12 key female artists across the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as celebrating 100 years of women having the vote. The drawing retains Iranian influences in the patterns making up the diamond-shaped background (reprenting a headscarf), the circular designs at the centre and the use of gold to highlight edges and details. It also foregrounds the bird motif which often appears symbolically across Shahrokhi’s work, representing freedom, notably in the numerous cloth swallows in her 54-piece installation, Flying (first made in 2011), which was presented at Ben Uri in 2016 in the exhibition, Unexpected, featuring fabric birds suspended on light wire in the upper gallery space, fluttering amid changing air movements, their decorative fabric 'plumage' supplied by women friends and relations still living in Iran. Shahrohki has commented of this work: 'It’s related to what these women are doing; they’re fighting for their freedom, their personal freedom - so that is a flight' (Ben Uri schools' discussion sheet on Migration, 2019).
Zory Shahrokhi lives and works in London. Her work has been exhibited at numerous galleries including the Ben Uri Gallery, the Foundling Museum, Norwich Art Centre, and Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art. Her work featured in Unexpected: Continuing Narratives of Identity and Migration at Ben Uri Gallery (2016); in Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art, held at the Royal West of England Academy and in Migrations: Masterworks from the Ben Uri Collection, at the Gloucester Museum, both in 2019. Her work is held in the Ben Uri Collection.
Related books
- Peter Wakelin, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art (Bristol: Sansom & Co., 2019)
- Helene Black et.al., In Transition Russia 2008 (Moscow, National Centre for Contemporary Art, 2008)
- Lee Levitt, ‘Visual Arts: What is it good for?', The Independent, 12 December 2003
Public collections
Related organisations
- London Metropolitan University (student)
- University of Hertfordshire (student)
Related web links
Selected exhibitions
- New Acquisitions and Long-term Loans, Ben Uri Gallery (2020)
- Interstices, London, Ben Uri Gallery & Museum (2020)
- Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art, Royal West of England Academy (2019)
- Migrations: Masterworks from the Ben Uri Collection, Gloucester Museum (2019)
- Highlights and New Acquisitions, Ben Uri Gallery (2018)
- Liberators: Extraordinary Women from the Ben Uri Collection, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2018)
- 100 for 100: Ben Uri-Past, Present, Future, Christie's South Kensington (2016)
- Unexpected: Continuing Narratives of Identity and Migration, Ben Uri Gallery (2016)
- In Transition: Russia 2008, National Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow (2008)
- RSVP with Commissions East, Foundling Museum (2007)
- Where Are We?, London: Foundling Museum (2007)
- Waves, Margaret Harvey Gallery and Norwich Art Centre (2007)
- Sanctuary: Contemporary Art & Human Rights, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (2003)
Ben Uri collection
Zory Shahrokhi in the Ben Uri collection
Ben Uri archive
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Zory Shahrokhi]
Ben Uri library
Publications related to [Zory Shahrokhi] in the Ben Uri Library