Naz Shahrokh

Biography

Naz Shahrokh was born in Tehran, Iran in 1969. The great granddaughter of Iranian politician and elected Zoroastrian representative, Arbab Keikhosrow Shahrokh, Naz grew up with a great respect for her Zoroastrian faith and for its associated traditions. She had a well-travelled childhood: ‘I was born in Iran,’ explains Shahrokh, ‘but I left when I was four and moved to Paris. At 11 I moved to Los Angeles and at 20 I moved to Brooklyn, New York.’ Shahrokh gained first her BFA in Painting, then her Masters MFA/MS in Painting and Art History, from Pratt Institute. Shahrokh enjoyed her student life and appreciated Pratt's dedication to empowering artists. She taught Fine Art and Art History at Pratt, from 1998 to 2004. Shahrokh moved to Egypt, where she taught at the American University in Cairo until 2006, when she accepted the post of Assistant Professor of Art & Design at the College of Arts & Sciences at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, UAE, where she currently lives and teaches.

Style and Influences

Due to her childhood travels and experience of different cultures, Shahrokh's work has many rich and varied inspirations. Her inspirations include: Persian miniature painting, 'Land art and earthworks, Minimalism and Conceptual art, and ephemeral Native American sandpainting '. The majority of her materials are detritus, either synthetic or organic, or a combination of both. Through her work, Shahrokh seeks to transform these disregarded and commonplace materials into something less ordinary. This deep connection with the natural environment is an important focus in Shahrokh's work.

With her roots in the Zoroastrian faith, she attempts to connect her studio practice with a commitment to making objects that are harmonious with the natural environment. Recycling and reducing waste has been a deep, international concern since the early 1990s, when Shahrokh first began to use recycled paper in her work. As well as feeding ‘Shahrokh’s desire to be in harmony with her environment,’ it is also a form of her own personal conceptual problem solving. Within her studio practice she has collected many different forms of detritus, such as leaves, which she treats and uses as small, miniature canvases, or sticks, bottles and other objects with which she forms large-scale, site-specific installations in the desert landscape.

Much of Shahrokh's works relates directly to her cultural roots, and artistic 'conversations' with the style and beliefs of other artists, such as Ana Mendieta and Joseph Beuys, to which Shahrokh pays homage in her artwork, entitled '22.1'. An installation work that includes found and collected materials, '22.1' comprises glass jars, folded linen shirts and a silver spoon in a suitcase.

Art as a social or political commentary

Whilst living in New York City, Shahrokh created work in protest at the mayor's decision to stop glass recycling. She created an installation from bottles that took on the topography of a mountain - Stratosphere (2002-2004). More recently while living in the UAE, her installation Haft-Sin Zazen (2010) made of piles of salt on a pure white cloth, alludes to the regions' reliance on desalination and water treatment. This work was conceptually linked both to the landscape and also to personal meaning for Shahrokh in context to her religious belief system. In her article on Naz Shahrokh’s work, Sharon Parker also links Haft Sin Zazen to Shahrokh’s experience of living in Egypt and relates the salt pyramids to earth mounds in the Egyptian landscape. "Haftsin" is the traditional Iranian New Year celebration and it is important to note that Shahrokh's work, strongly relates to the concepts of community and sharing.

‘In school I tended to focus on concepts. My main focus was recycling – giving new life to materials. I started working with paper, thinking about trees, thinking about materials and how to give them new life’. She created "Column Wall" in Abu Dhabi in 2010 - a very neatly stacked pile of the local 'National' newspapers 'collected over six months, intended to represent the tree that gave its life to produce it'. "Column Wall" could also be mistaken for a piece of architecture - it runs from floor to ceiling of a building, blending in with the surrounding walls and shadows.

Shahrokh makes social or political commentaries, but does not employ the shock tactics other contemporary artists often use. She raises awareness of important community issues, often relating to natural sustainability, through a painstakingly careful use of disregarded items and the peaceful regularity of the shapes and colours that she chooses. With its international influences and ancient philosophical inspirations, Shahrokh's art is a patient and methodical quest 'to be in harmony with her environment.'

Exhibitions/Awards

Naz Shahrokh has exhibitied nationally and internationally with past exhibitions of her work include: the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY; The Rotenda Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, Colorado; The Alexandria Library, Alexandria, Egypt; Tashkeel, Dubai, UAE; Bastakiya Art Fair, XVA Gallery, Dubai, UAE; Walsh Gallery, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ; Williamson Gallery, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA; Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX; Kerchoff Gallery, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA; Worth Ryder Gallery, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA; and Macy Gallery, Teacher’s College, Columbia University, New York, NY. Past awards for her work include: 1st Prize, Twenty-Second International Juried Exhibition, Viridian Gallery, NYC, Juror: Elisabeth Sussman, Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art (2011); Artist-In-The-Marketplace Fellowship, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY (2004); Silvermine Board of Trustees Award (consecutive), The 54th Art of the Northeast, Silvermine Guild Art Center, New Canaan, CT, Juror: Harry Philbrick, Director, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art (2003); and Change Inc. (the Rauschenberg Foundation) Grant, Captiva, FL (2003). Shahrokh has also received numerous grants for Professional development by both the American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt and Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Her work is housed in national and international public collections including: The Library of Congress, Washington D.C. – Reactions Collection, Exit Art; The Alexandria Library, Alexandria, Egypt; Art Museum of SouthEast Texas, Corpus Christi, TX; Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY; and Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ. Naz Shahrokh has also given many lectures, taken part in numerous panel discussions, artists' residencies and workshops in the US, Egypt, Italy and the UAE.