Shirin Abedinirad is the featured artist for Rowayat’s Issue #14: Mirrors.
She’s an Iranian artist whose work explores notions of identity, unity with nature, and the boundless essence of being through various mediums including video, performance, land art, and installation.
Born in Tabriz, Iran, in 1986, Shirin began her artistic journey with painting before earning degrees in graphic design and fashion. While researching conceptual overlaps between fashion and conceptual art, she became fascinated by performance and began staging public interventions that confront issues of gender, sexuality, and human compassion back in Iran. Shirin’s practice took a pivotal turn after a 2013 desert experience, which led her to create land and installation works centred on natural imagery. Using minimalist arrangements of elemental materials like water, mirrors, and light, she crafts liminal spaces that serve as portals to transcend separation from the living Earth. The optical effects generated reflect back our inherent belonging.
Exhibiting at festivals and biennials worldwide since 2010, Shirin’s work has been showcased across Europe, Asia, Australia, the Middle East, and North America. She is the author of a Persian-language book, Fashion and Conceptual Art in the 21st Century, the recipient of numerous grants and awards, and holds an MFA from Michigan State University.
Currently splitting her time between the United States and overseas projects, Shirin continues her conceptual exploration of the essence of selfhood and its relationship with nature through various forms of new media art. She is currently teaching as an assistant professor at Utah Valley University, where she inspires students to engage with art to foster unity and heal the planet through compassion.
