I am glad that things have changed. All efforts toward ridding oneself of the historical past and acquiring new family members have been rewarded. This new sequencing of verb tenses was the material expression of her private epiphanies. Now, photographs were just photographs: pieces of paper that could be pleated, replaced and slipped into a pocket.
Mirene Arsanios for the artist book Spectral Days
Setareh Shahbazi was born in Tehran one year and a day before the Iranian Revolution. She moved to Germany in 1985, leaving behind a swimming pool, a garden, and all family photographs. In the spring of 2009, she moved to Beirut with a box of photographs from Tehran. There she got into a close conversation with her neighbor Mirene Arsanios, a writer then based in Beirut.
Images: Setareh Shahbazi
Text: Mirene Arsanios
Design: Aude Lehmann
44 pages, 20x15 cm
No weight was lost, no conciousness gained,
but the joy of an inclement dialogue
An artist book with writings by Mirene Arsanios and photos by Setareh Shahbazi, handmade in a limited edition during a collaborative guest residency at Villa Romana Florence.
Shahbazi explores the way in which different traditions legitimate themselves by seducing us into recognizing notions that are supposedly central to defnitions of culture. But who is the we in this case? Where do we locate contemporary art practice when it is articulated outside traditional ideas of identity and cultural belonging? In other words, what are the implications of producing art, when one does not belong to a certain tradition?
Chus Martinez
The artist book Oh, no, no... – The Crystal Series was edited by Angelika Stepken, accompanying a solo exhibition at Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe in 2004
Editor: Angelika Stepken
Texts: Angelika Stepken and Simon Baier
Design: Aude Lehmann
Publisher: Badischer Kunstverein
48 pages, 30x20 cm
This catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition Step Out of the Strange Light at n.b.k. Berlin.
Step Out of the Strange Light presents the awardees the Berlin Senate’s work stipends in the visual arts in 2020.
At the heart of most contributions is an examination of real and imagined places, shaped both by ideological implications and collective practices. A common aspect is the impulse to reveal and question structures that are inscribed in, yet often hidden behind, forms of emergence and transformation of the social condition.
Editors: Marius Babias and Michaela Richter
Texts: Krisztina Hunya, Alan Pauls, Michaela Richter and Melanie Roumiguière.
Artists: Larissa Fassler, Raphaël Grisey in collaboration with Bouba Touré, Bettina Hutschek, Rajkamal Kahlon, Musquiqui Chihying, Mandla Reuter, Padraig Robinson, Setareh Shahbazi, Pauł Sochacki, Adnan and Nina Softić, Clarissa Thieme in collaboration with Charlotte Eifler
180 pages, German / English
Published by: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Cologne 2021
ISBN 978-3-7533-0108-2
Before History catalogues the exhibition for the Abraaj Group Art Prize 2015, which includes a new body of work by Yto Barrada, the winner of the prize, and existing work by shortlisted artists Sarnath Banerjee, Setareh Shahbazi, and Mounira Al Solh. The exhibition explores the layering of time through historical artifice. History here is considered as a constructed sphere, constantly in flux, simultaneously being buried and excavated.
This special catalogue consists of two artist books, one by Yto Barrada and the other devised in collaboration with the shortlisted artists. Together they function as a sculptural object, layering on top of each other.
Editor: Omar Kholeif
Artists: Mirene Arsanios, Yto Barrada, Sarnath Banerjee, Omar Kholeif, Setareh Shahbazi and Mounira Al Solh
Design: Julia.uk.com
Publisher: Sternberg Press and The Abraaj Group
232 pages, 19.8x2x26.7 cm
ISBN-13: 978-3956791215
Seeing Studies investigates the ways we learn “to see.” Based on a schoolbook published by the Iranian Ministry of Education to teach art in the first year of Iranian public middle school, this bilingual publication (English/Farsi) embarks on a collaborative journey, visiting different “schools of seeing.”
Edited by Natascha Sadr Haghighian and Ashkan Sepahvand for the institute for incongruous translation
With contributions by: Nazgol Ansarinia, Homayoun Askari Sirizi, Mehraneh Atashi, Mahmoud Bakhshi, Daniel Berndt, Binna Choi, Media Farzin, Shahab Fotouhi, Farhad Fozouni, Reza Haeri, Zoya Honarmand, image-shift, Hatem Imam, Sohrab Mohebbi, Mehdi Navid, Molly Nesbit, Oya Pancaroglu, Tina Rahimi, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Ashkan Sepahvand, Setareh Shahbazi, Zeinab Shahidi with Reza Abedini, Jana Traboulsi and William Wheeler.
Produced by dOCUMENTA (13) with Casco – Office for Art, Design, and Theory and the institute for incongruous translation.
Design: image-shift and Farhad Fozouni
Published by: Hatje Cantz
ISBN 978-3-7757-2972-7
Published on occasion of the exhibition Whenever It Starts It Is The Right Time – Strategies for a discontinuous future. at Frankfurter Kunstverein.
Editor: Chus Martinez
Texts: Chus Martinez, Charles Esche, Brian Holmes and Raimundas Malasauskas
Publisher: Revolver Books, Frankfurt am Main
