Slow Time

See Shirazeh Houshiary’s work in WTP Vol. VI #1

Since rising to prominence as a sculptor in the 1980s, Shirazeh Houshiary has expanded her practice to encompass painting, installation, architectural projects, and film. “I set out to capture my breath,” she said in 2000, to “find the essence of my own existence, transcending name, nationality, cultures.”

To create these paintings, a mixture of water and pigment is poured onto the surface of the canvas to produce an enigmatic ground punctuated by pooling sediment and irregular apertures. Over this layer, the artist’s hand is introduced through rigorous mark-making, in some paintings manifesting as words—Houshiary’s frequent pairing of an affirmation and a denial—and in others as lines creating a steady abstraction that radiates its own frequency and energy.

Houshiary has been nominated for the Turner Prize, and her work is included in collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Tate Collection, London. Shirazeh Houshiary lives and works in London.

Images Courtesy of the Lisson Gallery.