User:Iluevano/sandbox/Seher Shah

Seher Shah

Biography

Seher Shah is a contemporary artist that was born in 1975 in Karachi, Pakistan. In 1993 she graduated from Fiorella LaGuardia High School of Arts and Performing Arts in New York. In 1998 she received two Bachelor degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design, a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Architecture. She lives and works between Brooklyn, New York and New Delhi, India.

Significant Achievements

Over the past decade, Shah has had several residencies, such as the Headlands Center of Arts during the Project Space Residency in Sausalito, California in 2010 and in Durham, North Carolina in Duke University’s Borderworks Residency in 2012. Shah attended two additional Residencies in Glasgow, Scotland, the first in Below Another Sky in the Scottish Print Network Residency in 2014 and Glasgow Print Studio in 2018. In 2009 she won the Jameel Prize as a Finalist, which was held by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London as well as Art Jameel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Works

Seher Shah has been a working artist since 2006. Her art varies between three-dimensional, photography, and printmaking, while retaining an interest in abstract architectural forms. In a press article reviewing Seher Shah’s solo show, The Lightness of Mass, her work balances “weight and lightness” in its mixture of sculptures, photographs, and graphite illustrations. This dichotomic concept within structures can be seen in Of Absence and Weight, which was included in the Nature Morte Gallery in New Delhi during 2017, as well as her 2015 series, Flatland.

At the same time, Shah has created imagery based on compound ideas such as diaspora and migration. In the Homelands exhibition from Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, UK, Shah’s series of polymer photogravures titled, Argument from Silence, were included in the 2020 show. The theme of the exhibition was based on the still relevant affects of the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, as well as the 1971 independence of Bangladesh and the division it caused within South Asia and beyond.

Kettle’s Yard also showcases Shah as one of the two artists to respond to their recent series 'Reflections from Home', during the course of the Covid-19 pandemic. Shah includes a short text in which she titled, 'City Unknown: Notes from Defense Colony, New Delhi', as well as two graphite illustrations titled Muslin Gauze. Within her text Shah discusses the idea of gauze and how its thin nature relates to her drawings and architecture that she views from her balcony that has been weathered over the course of New Delhi’s history.

List of Works

2006

Her earliest works go by the title, Concrete Oracles, which is a series of eight Archival Giclée prints. Each print measuring at 48x33cm, and when showcased together the span of the total piece is 19x13”.

2011

Later on, Shah created two photographic works of Hinterland Structures, each image installed in a Duratran wooden light box and scaling at 7x5x3”. The images included the captions, Shed Church as well as Observation Tower.

Shah as a mixed media artist works with three dimensional installations as well, such as in her piece titled Object Repetition. According to Nature Morte, the dimensions for the art piece are unknown, but it is made up of 1,000 Cast Hydrocal Objects.

Unit Object (u-block) is a 28x22” drawing done in graphite and gouache on paper. The same dimensions and media follow with her drawing Unit Object (plane shift).

2012

         Study for a Totem is a 60x66” multi-image piece done in Graphite on paper. A second variation of Study for a Totum (double wall) was done in both graphite and gouache and measures at 30x44”.

         Shah did a small series titled Capitol Complex, which includes four separate 14x11” collages. They are dominantly black and white with limited color placed in two of the four collages. The four individual works are titled X Block, Yellow Courtyard Plan, Split Line Courtyard, and Blue Object.

         In the same year, Shah completed a second series of twenty-one archival digital prints shown together as, Mammoth Ariel Landscape Proposals, each print measuring at 13x17”.

2013

         Landscape Object is a piece done on plexiglass and acetate framed with painted wood, measuring 8x14”.

         Body Weight is made up of five Archival Giclée prints that are installed consecutively, each measuring 9x7” and framed.

2014

         Unit Object is the series title of three individual etchings onto metal plates, each measuring 26x22”. Their individual titles are House, Sculpture Garden, and Landscape View.

2015

In a series titled Flatland, there are three individual images titled Grid Base, Parallel Walls, and Reputation. The media of each image is ink on paper, and measure at 43x31”.

2018

         Night is a series of three prints done in oil on Stonehenge white rag paper, each measuring at 55.9x76.2cm.

2019

         Argument from Silence is a collection of ten individual polymer photogravures done on Velin Arches paper. Nine of the works measure 63.5x52.1 cm while one measures at 63.5x76.2 cm. The Green Art Gallery includes the individual titles of several of the prints, which are Broken Limb, Hand with Wreath, Fragments and Bodies, and Field Measurements.

2019-2020

          Foreign Dust is a series of fifteen images done in graphite on paper. Each illustration is not identical, though some can be grouped together by title, such as Landscape 1,2, and 3, measuring 55.9x76.2 cm. Variation 1,3,8,9,13,15 all measure 55.9x38.1 cm.

2020

         Ruined Score is the title of three 50x40 cm etchings done on Velin Arches paper.

2020-2021

         Her latest work is a series of illustrations done in graphite dust and ink on ivory colored Russian paper titled, Variations in Gray. The dimensions for the entire series are 21x29 cm.

Exhibitions

Solo and Two-Person Shows

Seher Shah has done a number of solo shows, such as in 2007 titled Black Star at the Momenta Art exhibition in Brooklyn, New York. Shah later had two additional solo exhibitions in New York, one in 2008 called Jihad Pop in the Bose Pacia Gallery and another in 2011 called, Object Anxiety, at the Scaramouche gallery. She had only one other show in the United States in 2013, which was Constructed Landscapes at The Contemporary Austin on the floor of the Jones Center in Austin, Texas.

         Outside of the United States, Seher Shah had several other solo exhibitions, most taking place in Dubai. In 2009 she had a show titled Paper to Monument in the Nature Morte exhibition in New Delhi. In 2016 at the Green Art Gallery, she presented The Lightness of Mass. Her latest Dubai show was in 2019 at the Jameel Arts Centre dubbed Artist’s Rooms: Seher Shah and Randhir Singh.

         Shah had another show with Randhir Singh in 2017, which was commissioned and then produced in 2018 by the Samdani Art Foundation for Dhaka Art Summit, titled Studies in Form, in Bangladesh. Earlier solo shows took place outside of Dubai, one in the Nature Morte exhibition in Berlin in 2012, following just after with two consecutive shows in 2013 and 2014, titled 30|60|90 at Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai, India, and Ways of Seeing which Shah shared with artist, Gauri Gill, at the Experimenter Gallery in Kolkata, India. She also had a solo in 2017 featured in Statements, in the Art Basel art fair in Basel, Switzerland.

Group Shows

Seher Shah was included in a multitude of international Group Shows. Shah’s first group exhibitions that are documented on her CV were in 2007, Generation 1.5 at the Queens Museum of Art in New York, Zeichnungen, Conceputal and concrete drawings at Gallery Gisele Linder in Basel Switzerland, and The Devotee Exhausts the Forces of Activity at Gallery Barry Keldoulis in Sydney, Australia. Shah had a recent group show in 2020 at the Dhaka Art Summit in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she was included in the exhibition, On Muzharul Islam: Surfacing Intention.

Significant Publications

One of Seher Shah’s earliest publications, Jihad Pop, was an exhibition catalogue produced by Bose Pacia in New York in 2008 following her solo exhibition of that year. Publications within the past decade including Seher Shah’s work such as, Brute Ornament, encompasses the work of Seher Shah and Kamrooz Aram in 2012 with text by Shumon Basar, Media Farzin, Alan Gilbert and Murtaza Vali, funded by the Green Art Gallery in Dubai. In 2016, The Lightness of Mass exhibition catalogue was produced with text written by Shanay Jhaveri and Murtaza Vali. It was published also by the Green Art Gallery in Dubai to coincide with the exhibition, The Lightness of Mass. The most recent publication that Shah was included in was an essay written by Jyoti Dhar in 2019 on her and Randhir Singh and their exhibition at the Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai.

External links

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