Shadi Harouni (born 1985) is an Iranian Kurdish artist and art critic based in the United States. A 2024

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

, she explores the resistance in

Kurdistan Kurdistan (, ; ), or Greater Kurdistan, is a roughly defined geo- cultural region in West Asia wherein the Kurds form a prominent majority population and the Kurdish culture, languages, and national identity have historically been based. G ...

in her work, which includes installation art, photography, and video. She is currently Assistant Professor of Video and Photography at the NYU Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions.

Biography

Shadi Harouni was born in 1985 in

Hamadan Hamadan ( ; , ) is a mountainous city in western Iran. It is located in the Central District of Hamadan County in Hamadan province, serving as the capital of the province, county, and district. As of the 2016 Iranian census, it had a po ...

, Iran, to Iranian Kurdish revolutionaries, before being exiled to the United States. After obtaining her BA from the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...

, she later moved to NYU Steinhardt, where she obtained her MFA and started working as a professor, teaching art history and

critical theory Critical theory is a social, historical, and political school of thought and philosophical perspective which centers on analyzing and challenging systemic power relations in society, arguing that knowledge, truth, and social structures are ...

. At NYU Steinhardt's Department of Art and Art Professions, she has served as Head of Photography and Video, and originally served as Director of Undergraduate Studies from 2017 until 2023. In 2019, she was the acting director of

Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture is an artists residency located in Madison, Maine, just outside of Skowhegan. Every year, the program accepts online applications from emerging artists from November through January, and selects 65 ...

. She also worked at the

Parsons The New School for Design The Parsons School of Design is a private art and design college under The New School located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhattan art ...

as a teacher. Harouni's themes in her work, which include photography and film, include the resistance in

, as well as remembrance. Her installation "Things" appeared at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art's 2011 ''First Look III'' exhibition. ''

ArtAsiaPacific ''ArtAsiaPacific'' is the longest running English-language periodical solely dedicated to covering contemporary art and culture from sixty-seven countries, territories, and Chinese Special Administrative Regions that it considers to be within As ...

'' said of her 2015 video ''The Lightest of Stones and the Heaviest of Men'', exhibited at Queens International 2016: "while her action in itself is reminiscent of other Sisyphean-themed works such as

Francis Alÿs Francis Alÿs (born 1959, Antwerp) is a Belgian-born, Mexico-based artist. His work emerges in the interdisciplinary space of art, architecture, and social practice. In 1986, Alÿs left behind his as an architect and relocated to Mexico City, ...

's ''When Faith Moves Mountains'' ... there is another dimension to Harouni's work due to the quarry workers' commentary that breaks the existential facade of the performance". She was awarded a

in 2024. In addition to art, she wrote a few art exhibition reviews for

Tehran Bureau Tehran Bureau is an online news magazine covering politics, foreign affairs, culture and society in Iran and the Iranian Diaspora. It was founded by Iranian-born journalist Kelly Golnoush Niknejad in February 2008, initially as a blog. In May 200 ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Harouni, Shadi 1985 births Living people Iranian installation artists Women installation artists Iranian photographers Iranian women photographers 21st-century women photographers Iranian video artists Women video artists Iranian art critics Women art critics People from Hamadan Iranian Kurdish women Kurdish artists Kurdish women artists University of Southern California alumni Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development alumni Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development faculty Parsons School of Design faculty Iranian exiles Refugees in the United States Iranian expatriates in the United States