This is the first monographic overview publication of the work of Farkhondeh Shahroudi. Long overdue, but in the accurate context of the Hannah Höch Support Award, which the artist received on the 1st of November 2022 in Kupferstichkabinett Museum Berlin, generously supported by the Senate Department of Berlin for Culture and Europe.
The publication contains a selection of Shahroudi’s works from 1990 to 2022. The focus of the selection is on the works in which poetry and language interact. Her artworks are scripted with drawings and stitched three-dimensional collages, which are transformed into textile, collage-like morphs floating in space. They don’t appear chronologically, but rather in dialogue with the works themselves and following the writings, scoping out various aspects of her oeuvre.
For the last thirty years, Farkhondeh Shahroudi has been working with different artistic forms—poetry / automatic writing / onomatopoeia, drawings, installations, soft sculpture, performance, and photography. During these years, she has gradually separated herself from the two-dimensional canvas and delved into the spatial exploration of heterotopias, only to recently return to large-scale drawings that evoke her fantastical world of imagination, composed of small black felt pen strokes. In all these forms, language and writing are present on all levels up to the performative.
we are no more then the pen in a writer’s hand, where we go, we do not know, quote by the Sufi Poet Rumi, serves as the title of this monograph. With this title the unconscious flow of artistic expression in both text and texture of Shahroudi’s work is accentuated. In this book, six authors have been invited to publish a text on her work. All of them have been closely involved with Shahroudi’s work over different periods of her practice.
wir sind die feder in des schreibers hand, wohin wir gehen, ist uns nicht bekannt – Farkhondeh Shahroudi
Edited by Pauline Doutreluingne
Beiträgen von
Translation by Fatemeh Nekounam
Copy editing: Janna Aldaraji, Sina Eggers, Suza Husse
Design by Aziza Ahmad
Printing: X-Press Grafik & Druck GmbH
Diese Publikation erscheint anlässlich der Verleihung und begleitend zur Ausstellung des Hannah-Höch-Förderpreises 2022 im Kupferstichkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin: Farkhondeh Shahroudi. Beckmann war nicht hier / This illustrated book is published on the occasion of the award ceremony and to accompany the exhibition
of the Hannah Höch Advancement Award 2022 in the Museum of Prints and Drawings of the National Museums in Berlin: Farkhondeh Shahroudi. Beckmann was not here
Kupferstichkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin
02.11.2022–05.02.2023
Die Ausstellung wurde kuratiert von
Jenny Graser. Die Mitglieder der Jury waren Jenny Graser (Kupferstichkabinett),
Willem de Rooij (Künstler und Professor an der, Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main) und Hilke Wagner (Direktorin des, Albertinum der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden).