From April until June 2022, the Iranian/Swiss visual artist Shirana Shahbazi (°1974) will take up residency at the research group Thinking Tools. Her artistic practice has been shaped by the desire to question and expand the boundaries of the photographic medium. Inspired by an earlier residency in India, in 2018, she will use the residency period in Antwerp to further explore the technique of hand coloring photographic images, a slowly disappearing craft in photography. Through a careful study of the different artisan methods used to apply color to images, she aims to develop a new, fully handmade body of work. Stressing the importance of her own bodily involvement in creating these images, she aims to question the general dematerialization of image making in the current digital age.
The work of Shirana Shabazi has received several awards (amongst them the Prix Meret Oppenheim in 2019 and the Citigroup Private Bank Photography Price in 2002). Her work is present in the collections of several important institutions, such as MoMA (New York), Huis Marseille (Amsterdam), Fotomuseum Winterthur (Winterthur), Sprengel Museum (Hannover) and Tate Modern (London).
(Image: Shirana Shahbazi, Kandalama, 2019 - four-colored lithography on cotton paper - 70 x 50 cm - detail)