Mixed media artist Batool Showghi explores themes of cultural heritage, memory, identity, and loss. Her work is concerned with the experience of women and the way in which this experience relates to cultural and religious boundaries. Pieces reflect on the theme of turbulence, immigration, disintegration of the family and the experience of displacement.
In response to the recent uprising of Iranian women, Batool has created a series of textile works around the theme of Struggle and Rise of Women.
Join Batool as she shares the stories that inspired her work.
Batool Showghi: https://batoolshowghi.com/
Batool Showghi
Showghi uses family birth certificates, passports, old photographs and documents to create her pieces. Her work and writings in Farsi are a poetic reflection on her memories, the environment she grew up in, the family, and a city which was lost during the war. These visual autobiographical artworks are designed to narrate and show the beauty and sadness of this struggle which will always be there.
Her figures come to life on canvas. The sewing machine and its needle are her drawing tools. She creates these heads, bodies, and hands intuitively, as if they look at the audience and question their plight. There is a sense of solidarity and movement between them. They know that they will succeed and overcome their struggle.
Showghi was born in Iran and moved to England in 1985. She received a merit for her MA in Design & Media Arts from the University of Westminster in 1997. Batool’s mixed media work and artist’s books can be found at: The Tate Britain, British Library, The Royal Navy Museum in Portsmouth, The Museum of Art and Literature, Yerevan, Armenia, and in many public and private collections.
Filmed at the Knitting & Stitching Show, London 2023.
For a more inspiration, please browse the ‘Meet the Artist’ collection on my YouTube Channel.