The artists

Shirazeh Houshiary

Shirazeh Houshiary buries every point of departure that might define an origin. "I set out to capture my breath," she says, to "find the essence of my own existence, transcending name, nationality, cultures." (Shirazeh Houshiary, 2000)

Born in Shiraz, Iran, Houshiary enrolled at the Chelsea School of Art in 1976 and has lived in London ever since. Houshiary's paintings are elusive, barely visible, and they change in our vision over time - they refuse to be frozen into a finite moment, of the kind that could be captured by a camera. They intentionally stand at the very edge of perception, the signs both emerging from nothingness and simultaneously melting back into it. Yet these paintings painstakingly record a process of obstinate mark making, of personal gestures inscribing time, of checking the pressure of one's presence, the precision of one's vision, against the resistant surface. (Fereshteh Daftari, "Beyond Islamic roots - beyond Modernism", Res 43, Spring 2003: Islamic Arts.)

Shirazeh Houshiary lives and works in London, UK.