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Morehshin Allahyari
Morehshin Allahyari (Persian: مورهشین اللهیاری; born 1985) is an Iranian media artist, activist, and writer based in the Bay Area and an assistant professor of digital media art at Stanford University. Her work questions current political, socio-cultural, and gender norms, particularly exploring the relationship between technology, history, and art activism. 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). Allahyari’s artworks include 3D-printed objects, videos, experimental animation, web art, and publications. As a 2017 research resident at Eyebeam, Allahyari also worked on the concept of "Digital Colonialism"; a term she has coined since 2015.
She is known for her projects Material Speculation: ISIS (2015–2016), which is a series of 3D-printed sculptural reconstructions of ancient artifacts destroyed by ISIS (2015–2016); She Who Sees The Unknown (2017–2020), The 3D Additivist Manifesto and Cookbook (2015–2016).
Morehshin Allahyari was born in 1985 and raised in Tehran, Iran, during the Iran-Iraq War. She is ethnically Kurdish.
Allahyari 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.
Allahyari attended the University of Tehran from 2003 until 2007, B.A. degree in social science and media studies.[citation needed] She moved to the United States in 2007 to continue her studies. She attended the University of Denver, and received a M.A. degree (2009) in digital media studies; followed by study at the University of North Texas from 2010 to 2012, and received a M.F.A. degree in new media art.[non-primary source needed]
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. 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. 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, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, New Museum, The Ford Foundation Gallery, among others.
In continuance with themes of all-powerful feminine and queer jinn from Islamic mythology, Allahyari debuted "The Laughing Snake" (2018), a web project co-commissioned by The Whitney Museum, Liverpool Biennale, and FACT. The resultant work is an interactive browser-based experience consisting of hyperlinked poetry, soundscapes, and 3D animations hosted on Whitney Museum's Artnet portal. The work uses the myth of 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.
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Morehshin Allahyari
Morehshin Allahyari (Persian: مورهشین اللهیاری; born 1985) is an Iranian media artist, activist, and writer based in the Bay Area and an assistant professor of digital media art at Stanford University. Her work questions current political, socio-cultural, and gender norms, particularly exploring the relationship between technology, history, and art activism. 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). Allahyari’s artworks include 3D-printed objects, videos, experimental animation, web art, and publications. As a 2017 research resident at Eyebeam, Allahyari also worked on the concept of "Digital Colonialism"; a term she has coined since 2015.
She is known for her projects Material Speculation: ISIS (2015–2016), which is a series of 3D-printed sculptural reconstructions of ancient artifacts destroyed by ISIS (2015–2016); She Who Sees The Unknown (2017–2020), The 3D Additivist Manifesto and Cookbook (2015–2016).
Morehshin Allahyari was born in 1985 and raised in Tehran, Iran, during the Iran-Iraq War. She is ethnically Kurdish.
Allahyari 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.
Allahyari attended the University of Tehran from 2003 until 2007, B.A. degree in social science and media studies.[citation needed] She moved to the United States in 2007 to continue her studies. She attended the University of Denver, and received a M.A. degree (2009) in digital media studies; followed by study at the University of North Texas from 2010 to 2012, and received a M.F.A. degree in new media art.[non-primary source needed]
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. 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. 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, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, New Museum, The Ford Foundation Gallery, among others.
In continuance with themes of all-powerful feminine and queer jinn from Islamic mythology, Allahyari debuted "The Laughing Snake" (2018), a web project co-commissioned by The Whitney Museum, Liverpool Biennale, and FACT. The resultant work is an interactive browser-based experience consisting of hyperlinked poetry, soundscapes, and 3D animations hosted on Whitney Museum's Artnet portal. The work uses the myth of 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.