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Artist, activist, educator and curator, Morehshin Allahyari was born and raised in Iran, and since 2007 has moved to the United States. She focuses on the cultural, social and political contradictions of our times using technology as a potential poetic tool with which to bear witness to the existential issues, both individual and collective, of human beings in the 21st century.

At the 10th Florence Biennale, Morehshin presents Re Uthal, a piece from the series ‘Material Speculation: ISIS’, a work in progress of three-dimensional moulding and moulding ideally aimed at the reconstruction of works destroyed by ISIS in 2015 (statues from the Roman period from the city of Hatra and Assyrian artefacts from Nineveh).

‘Material Speculation: ISIS’ represents a particular solution for the constitution of a cultural heritage archive and at the same time suggests the use of 3D moulding technology as a possible documentation tool to serve as historical reconstruction and the restitution of memory.

 
With ‘Material Speculation: ISIS’, the artist goes beyond the metaphorical gesture and formal representation as each printed piece in the series incorporates a flash drive and memory card containing images, maps, documents in pdf format and videos concerning the archaeological site of reference and the works destroyed therein. Like a time capsule, each piece is sealed as it contains evidence of civilisation to be preserved for the future (with instructions on how to open the object in order to access the computer devices without destroying it). The information material included in each piece of the series is the result of extensive research, to which Iraqi and Iranian archaeologists and historians contributed, as well as collaborators from the Mosul Museum. In the coming months, upon completion of the final phase of the project, the 3D moulding files will be sorted into an online archive and downloadable, thus available to the public. Morehshin Allahyari has taken part in numerous international exhibitions, workshops and festivals, including Open Engagement, the Prospectives ‘12 International Festival of Digital Art, and the Currents New Media Festival. He has presented his creative research work at TED and CAA conferences, as well as at various universities and cultural institutions such as the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Dallas Museum of Art, and others. 

His work has been featured in newspapers and magazines such as ‘Rhizome’, ‘Hyperallergic’, ‘Animal New York’, ‘Art F City’, ‘Creators Project’, ‘Dazed Digital’, ‘Huffington Post’, ‘NPR’, ‘VICE’, ‘Parkett Art Magazine’, ‘Art Actuel Magazine’, ‘Neural Magazine’, ‘Global Voices’ online, and has been broadcast by Al Jazeera and the BBC. Morehshin Allahyari is currently a lecturer at San Jose State University, and co-founder and curatorial and research assistant at the Experimental Research Lab of the Pier 9 Autodesk Workshop in San Francisco.

www.morehshin.com