Seher Shah
08 Dec 2009 - 09 Jan 2010
SEHER SHAH
"Paper to Monument"
December 8th 2009 to January 9th, 2010
Seher Shah's work navigates the many permutations of personal and historical collective spatial memory through powerful graphic constructions. Trained as an architect, she starts with her own detailed drawings and then combines these with found imagery, both diagrammatic and photographic. Shah's black and white prints and drawings explore the dimensions and incarnations of various iconographies: architectural, historical, personal, and political. The exhibition is comprised of large-scale drawings as well as digital prints in a variety of sizes and formats. The impetus of her artistic exploration is the space of memory, this begins with her personal recollections and retracing of iconic architectural spaces and forms, as well as the official and clandestine histories of the various cultures she has lived in during her life.
Shah's mise en scène is a complex construction of icons, symbols, spaces and historical eras. Through her thoughtful and innovative draftsmanship and compositional style, Shah presents the viewer with dynamic landscapes of imagined recollections and possible scenarios for the future. Using the aesthetics of power from pagan symbology to elements of Imperial authority, Shah's work portrays the organic amalgam of recreating the historical and the personal by synthesizing location and sentiment into a kinetic alternate space of memory; memory which makes no distinction between public and private happenings.
Born in 1975 in Karachi, Pakistan, Seher Shah grew up in Belgium, the U.K, and New York City. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Architecture Degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998. Over the past years her work has appeared in several international exhibitions including "Zeichnungen" at Gisele Linder Gallery, Basel; "Generation 1.5" at The Queens Museum of Art; "21: Twenty-First Century Artists" at The Brooklyn Museum; FIAC at the Cour Caree, Louvre in Paris; "The Jameel Prize" at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and "Drawing Space" at Green Cardamom, London.
Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art Asia Pacific, Bidoun, New York Magazine, Time Out New York, and Frieze Magazine, amongst others. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum and The Queens Museum in New York City; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Schauffhausen, Switzerland; Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt; the Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi; and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Foundation, Vienna, amongst others.
Seher Shah currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
"Paper to Monument"
December 8th 2009 to January 9th, 2010
Seher Shah's work navigates the many permutations of personal and historical collective spatial memory through powerful graphic constructions. Trained as an architect, she starts with her own detailed drawings and then combines these with found imagery, both diagrammatic and photographic. Shah's black and white prints and drawings explore the dimensions and incarnations of various iconographies: architectural, historical, personal, and political. The exhibition is comprised of large-scale drawings as well as digital prints in a variety of sizes and formats. The impetus of her artistic exploration is the space of memory, this begins with her personal recollections and retracing of iconic architectural spaces and forms, as well as the official and clandestine histories of the various cultures she has lived in during her life.
Shah's mise en scène is a complex construction of icons, symbols, spaces and historical eras. Through her thoughtful and innovative draftsmanship and compositional style, Shah presents the viewer with dynamic landscapes of imagined recollections and possible scenarios for the future. Using the aesthetics of power from pagan symbology to elements of Imperial authority, Shah's work portrays the organic amalgam of recreating the historical and the personal by synthesizing location and sentiment into a kinetic alternate space of memory; memory which makes no distinction between public and private happenings.
Born in 1975 in Karachi, Pakistan, Seher Shah grew up in Belgium, the U.K, and New York City. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Architecture Degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998. Over the past years her work has appeared in several international exhibitions including "Zeichnungen" at Gisele Linder Gallery, Basel; "Generation 1.5" at The Queens Museum of Art; "21: Twenty-First Century Artists" at The Brooklyn Museum; FIAC at the Cour Caree, Louvre in Paris; "The Jameel Prize" at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and "Drawing Space" at Green Cardamom, London.
Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art Asia Pacific, Bidoun, New York Magazine, Time Out New York, and Frieze Magazine, amongst others. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum and The Queens Museum in New York City; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Schauffhausen, Switzerland; Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt; the Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi; and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Foundation, Vienna, amongst others.
Seher Shah currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.