A cooperative show by Art & Science, University of Applied Arts and Vienna Art Week with an array of scientific institutes at Vienna Art Week 13 in MQ, Ovalhalle. In addition to being an exhibitor, I was also responsible for the exhibition graphics, communication, catalogue and production.
Commissioned by
MA Art & Science, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Link
http://artscience.uni-ak.ac.at/activities/crucial_experiments
2013
Identity & artwork for cycling merchandise.
Commissioned by
Phil
Link
https://www.trikoterie.at/
Instagram
@trikoterie
Credit
Pascal Lebersorger
Post processing
Pascal Lebersorger, Stefan Schiermeier
2017
SMITHS is the Goldsmiths student union magazine I was assigned Design Editor. Three issues were published throughout two semesters. Our goal for the year was to develop a feature based magazine, that would be redefined with each issue and refining its identity as we progressed. Hence our motto “We can do anything with this”. The features, photography and visuals were entirely sourced from the student body, resulting in the democratisation of the magazine both by the student body and for it. During my tenure as Design Editor I designed the SMITHS logo, the Goldsmiths year planner, distribution material, the magazines themselves, and organised the 3rd issues’ launch exhibition.
Commissioned by
BA Design Goldsmiths University of London
Link
issuu.com/unionplus/docs/smiths_issue_3
2009—2010
My brilliant partner Benjamin Weetman, the rest of the graphics team and myself are responsible for the graphics, identity and show graphics of the Future Folk BA Design University of London degree show. The catalogue doubled up as a guide and memento to the 4 day exhibition. We approached the design of the document to correspond with our ideas about the distribution of a collective publication. Our intention was to take full advantage of this rare opportunity, with the intention of applying our graphical knowledge and resources to challenge and push the traditional format. There are 1000 copies of the released publication, risograph printed with Ditto Press, on 80 gsm evercopy recycled paper inside a screen printed Fenner 270g colourset cover, bound together with rubber bands.
Context
Degree Show
Commissioned by
BA Design Goldsmiths University of London
Link
It's Nice That
futurefolkdesign.co.uk
2011
A language of production is transformed into a language of use. Remove the clutter, trim reality down, and create a set of interfacing prototypes that allow a more direct access to the language of objects. Such objects must be simplistic and tactile enough to be freely associable to any given design task, any environment and any test subject, including myself. 3D printing technology allowed me to create a set of infinitely reproducible, replaceable, uniform objects that can serve this purpose.
What you see before you should be understood as language. However, I don’t expect everyone to have the same understanding of it. There exists a culture of objects and how we perceive them. As we are individuals, we interpret objects differently. Each piece has meaning in itself. Taken together the meaning may change — their collective becomes greater than the individual parts. Together they can be a conversation. Together they can be language.
More important is how others can contextualise these items. It is universal in the way that it knows no limit of tongue, vocabulary, grammar, or even literacy.
Context
Degree projekt
BA Design Goldsmiths University of London
2010—2011
The initiative sponsored by SHIFT was a silk screen workshop-concept facilitated by Viadukt in collaboration with a number of female artists, who brought us each together with volunteers from various marginalised communities. The outcomes of these individual workshop series, culminated in a group show.
It was my privilege to be paired with a group of strong teenage refugee women. My workshop for them aimed to materialise the groups impression of the city they now call home.
Commissioned by
Viadukt
2018
A strip of light dependent resistors, working in unison through Arduino and Logic, produce an analogue orchestra that is presented alongside my colleagues from the Live Project. After the Live Project, we voluntarily continued working on the interactive segment of our design proposal that led to this outcome. We perforated over 40 metres of print roll paper with a vinyl cutter to enable anyone to interact with the device. By picking these perforated dots out of the paper, the user was able to compose a piece of music.As the paper passed through the sensor array, the dots that had been removed would cause light to shine onto the LDR’s and in turn trigger samples within the Logic environment. Within the environment was a bank of samples, each sensor had its own bank, within which notes were randomised to give variety. The Digital Pianola was proudly featured at the London College of Fashion graduate digital showcase in 2010.
Digital Pianola Team
Hal Gillilan, Benjamin Weetman,
Doug Roxburgh, Zahra Shahabi
Link
Video 1
Video 2
2010
Opulent and fragile, these sculptures are indeed inflated. Would it not be for it‘s source of power this would merely be a heap of garbage bags. The sum of the plastic parts create an animated greater whole. I‘d like to demonstrate how the best things in life are finite. Produced with a minimal budget, I found plastic bags to be ubiquitous and dirt cheap though weighing heavy on my ecological conscience.
To this day I have developed a range of such sculptures, each perfectly tailored to diverse spaces and a particular theme. Given every unique opportunity to reiterate, I have developed and advance this sculptural project, calling attention to the state of negligence toward valuable resources we label "disposable" and condescendingly take for granted.
The advantage to this form of installation is its flexibility regarding production. You name the space, I’ll gladly create the piece or pieces that best interact within it and the people engaged.
Mural on Theresianumgasse, Vienna.
Context
Gallery Hilger NEXT
Cash Cans & Candy
2016
Fetishising mundane consumer goods may be a symptom of frustration or mere sexual curiosity. Either way, it is a practice that many tend to be kept even more private than the already socially stigmatised regular sexual behaviour. Out of shame, fear of judgement or of crossing rationalised social taboos regarding the practices of procreation many will deny this industrially curious part of their desire or fantasy. This series does not intend to demonise nor cast judgement, but rather romanticise this repressed part of our base drive.
2 × Acrylic on canvas 120 × 80 cm
7 × 4 — 6 colour screen print
series 70 × 50 cm
ED. 10 + 4 a.p
Viadukt Artist & Residency
Contact me for availability
2017
Collaborative sculpture with BOICUT using acrylics & spray paint on constructed plastics.
Context
Gallery Hilger NEXT
Cash Cans & Candy
Availability / Price
Click here & ask
2016
A collaborative art installation by Maria Christina Hilber, Max Kropitz, Zahra Shahabi & Sergio Valenzuela for the group show "Crucial Experiments".
The project attempts to create a synaesthetic bridge between visual and the olfactory input. The user is given the opportunity to test his or her ability to recognise three individuals through their smell rather than their voice or appearance.
Three dancers perform a choreography on video, wearing specially designed sweat collectors that enable each individual’s sweat and scent to be sampled and collected. In this performance each dancer is entirely painted in one of the colours corresponding to those of a printer’s cartridges: cyan, magenta, and yellow.
The collected sweat is analysed, sampled, concentrated, and filled into the respective colour cartridges, allowing the printer to effectively print the scent of the dancers on paper. Each dancer is introduced to the user with a portrait alongside a sample of their individual scent.
The user then watches the video of the recorded performance — in black and white. By eliminating the colour on screen, the user is forced to rely on their nose to recognise the dancers. The video is paused, the still is shown, and the user is presented with the option to print. The identity of each dancer must now be determined by comparing the black and white image with the olfactory print of the still. The user is asked to smell the colours present and rate them by percentage. Upon submitting results, the screen reveals the equivalent image in colour and resolves the question.
Context
Crucial Experiments
Ovalhalle Museums Quartier
Commissioned by
MA Art & Science
Die Angewandte Kunst Wien
Link
artscience.uni-ak.ac.at/
2013
Mural for #Streetartpassage
166 × 238 cm
Commissioned by
Jan Arnold Gallery, MQ
2018
I have run out of places to hide. I’ve been relocated, displaced, expelled, bureaucratically forgotten, uprooted, dissimilated and disenfranchised. I was born from Iranian parents, then on diplomatic mission in Harare. So along with Persian heritage, British upbringing and Viennese schooling, my passport labels me Iranian. Beyond simple desire to form identity without distinctive or localisable origin, I consider Art and Design fertile ground for social-transformational projects beyond “self”-despite, or perhaps thanks to a potential for self-erasure.
As a concept-driven, cross-disciplinary designer and artist, I am capable of making, thinking, building, researching and development. I resent having my works labeled “Iranian” or “Austrian” and I dread the horrendous deadlock of orientalism. I find hope in a kind of pan-European outlook, one which dismisses systemically ingrained categories like ‘immigration’ in favour of “utopian” urgency.
With the utmost respect, I have no intention of promoting one or the other institution, through my artistic endeavours. This will certainly not be my final attempt at challenging myself by branching out to areas outside my realm of studies and occupation, but rather I hope it can be one of many to follow.
Zahra Shahabi
Piaristengasse 62/3-4
1080 Vienna
Call me: +43 699 11334040
Write me: z@zeitgleich.at
VAT: ATU72419019
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Webdesign & Coding: Florian C. Wachmann
