Shirin Towfiq is an interdisciplinary artist working with an emphasis on installation, sculptural photography, textiles, and printmaking. Drawing from her positionality as a second-generation Iranian refugee, her artwork explores the complexities of belonging and placemaking through archival research and intergenerational communication with a diasporic lens. Towfiq focuses on everyday practices of belonging and visual culture, as produced by migrants, and reflects on the traces of diaspora to investigate cultural memory, history, and temporality. Drawing from her own experiences, Towfiq depicts the liminal spaces we inhabit and the negotiations between language, culture, and belonging across generations. As a member of a diasporic community, she aims to bring new narratives into the art world around questions of belonging and whose memories are valued. She makes her work for communities whose stories and memories are disappearing or were never written into an archive.
Image: Shirin Towfiq, Exiled Landscapes, 2023. 1 of a series of 10 collages made from glicee prints on paper and canvas. 17 x 22 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.