Shirazeh Houshiary: East window
Title: East window
Artist: Shirazeh Houshiary (b. 1955, Iranian-born/British) and Pip Horne
Location: St Martin-in-the-Fields (C of E)
Date: 2007
This work was shortlisted for the ACE Award for Art in a Religious Context 2009.
‘Houshiary ... took the vocabulary of the stained glass window and its metal frame to create entirely new forms [and] created a remarkable cultural effect which combines, through line only, the shape of Christ on the Cross with an eclipse of light at its centre.’ (Gill Hedley reporting for the ACE award for Art in a Religious Context)
‘I set out to capture my breath, to find the essence of my own existence, transcending name, nationality, cultures.’ (Shirazeh Houshiary, 2000)
Born in Shiraz, Iran, the sculptor Shirazeh Houshiary has lived and worked in the United Kingdom since 1976 when she began her studies at Chelsea School of Art. She was identified with other young sculptors who came of age in the 1980s such as Richard Deacon and Anish Kapoor, though her voice was distinctive from her contemporaries for both its Persian and Sufi influences, especially Rumi.
Major group exhibitions include Centre George Pompidou, MOMA in New York and The Museum Modern Art, Oxford. She participated in the Venice Biennale (1982), The XXIII Bienal de Sao Paulo and the Skulptur Biennial Munsterland (2003). Houshiary was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994.
Further Information
Medium: Glass, stainless steel
Permanent display
See Shirazeh Houshiary’s East Window on the Ecclesiart map here.
Commissioner: PCC of St-Martin-in-the-Fields, with advice from the St Martin’s Arts Advisory Panel and Modus Operandi Consultants
Other artworks in churches by Shirazeh Houshiary:
Related A&C journal article(s): Art & Christianity 48