Shahram Entekhabi

Shahram Entekhabi (PerB| شهرام انتخابی ), born 1963, is an Iranian-born artist and architect whose work has been the subject of many exhibitions all over the world, currently living and working across London, Berlin and Tehran. He is active in the fields of video art, photography, painting, drawings, installation, performance art and community art.

Biography

He studied graphic-design at the University of Tehran, Iran and studied architecture, urbanism, and Italian language in Perugia and Reggio Calabria, Italy. He works as independent architect on residential projects and competitions. He received a 2004 fellowship at the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA and 2007 Live Art UK Touring Commission R&D (Research and Development grants).

Work

Since the video work "i?" (2003-4, 4:17 min duration) he started a big series with the so-called “migrant-figure” that embodies clichés of the West on behaviours of various migrants, especially those from the Middle East. Later videos show the migrant figure show him in reduced but typical actions: walking down a road (“Road movie-2”), walking through deserts (“Gold”), failure when celebrating a birthday party (“Alcazar 2450-2”), walking through the territory of an abandoned factory (“Rockefeller boulevard-2”), making a statement by using caution tape as if raising claim for his own territory (“Caution-2”, “Attenzione”). Recently he has started a new series, with new figures of migrants, also meeting the various prejudices: the Islamic fundamentalist, the Kurdish activist, the Guerrilla-guy, the criminal from the Balkans. In “Islamic star”, the figure is showing the stigma of an Islamic star on his shirt (with an “m” for “Muslim” on the star, similar to the ones that German Jews were forced to wear during the Nazi regime).

"In my eyes it is quite rare that a male artists works with his personal body in this sense (beyond the fetish). Therefore I think that it is an interesting question in terms of analyzing the position of migrants, especially if you compare my auto-aggressive behavior to the one of the female artists since the 70s. I transport this confrontation also in my sculptures and para-architectures. In installation “M” (based on five lockers which four of them content the outfit and equipments of my performed different migrant figures and an empty one, and five large mirror framed by lights bubbles) I construct a sculpture of memories of myself and the others, trans-identity, xenophobia, and Sinophobe." Shahram Entekhabi

olo exhibitions

* From the Banks of a River called HOME — Centre d'art Nei Liicht, Dudelange, Luxembourg
* Visual Foreign Correspondent, De Balie Centre, Amsterdam., The Netherlands
* been a long way, baby (2006) — Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow, Poland
* in Common — Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt/Main, Germany

=External links=
* [http://www.entekhabi.org Shahram Entekhabi] Official site
* [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entekhabi Wikipedia Deutschland ]
* [http://www.parasite-architecture.org/ Parasite Architecture Projects]
* [http://www.galerie-beckers.de/display.php?cat=artists&id=22 Artist's works at Galerie Anita Beckers]