Shirin Sahba
b. 1982, Iran

Shirin Sahba was born in India to an architect and graphic designer, spending her adolescent years surrounded by the pristine azures of the Mediterranean, visiting 25 countries before she was sixteen. It was travel that compelled her to paint and her palette was laden with the colours, the tones, the contours and textures of the vibrant landscapes she was privileged to encounter and the vivid personalities who negotiated those spaces.

Since the beginning, her commitments to canvas of her reflections on the nature of diverse peoples’ engagements with myriad spaces have evolved a unique consciousness in her art: humanity is one and humanity’s watchword is unity in diversity. And to accept this is to insist on drawing (out) the joy, the goodness, the beauty of people relating to people relating to spaces. To see the joy even of separation, the goodness even of sadness, and the beauty even of failure. The nostalgia of place, the sense of being of but not in Shirin’s landscapes, or vice versa, is what engenders the shared sense of expansive intimacy and secure vulnerability that is unique to her work.

Education

2001-2005 Ontario College of Art & Design
Graduate with Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree.
Toronto, Canada

Art Fairs

2020 Art Busan Korea International Art Fair
2013 Beijing Contemporary Art Fair, Beijing, China

Solo Exhibitions

2018 Galeria Cromo, New Horizons – Barcelona, Spain
2014 Sidewalk Gallery, An Indian Summer – Hong Kong, China
2008 Galerie Sorance, Shirin Sahba, Victoria, B.C
2007 Lipman Contemporary Art, Shirin Sahba: New Paintings, Toronto, Ontario
2007 La Galerie Espace, Mer De Citron, Bateau De Merveilles, Montreal, Ontario
2005 Lipman Contemporary Art, Day Dreams, Toronto, Ontario

Group Exhibitions

2024 'Boundless, Binding', Subliminal Projects x Emergeast, Los Angeles, USA
2021 Galeria Cromo Group Show with Shirin Sahba, Gina Thostensen & Cobra
2008 Galerie Sorance, Shirin Sahba and Sherry Mitchell New Works. Curator: Soraya Centeno-Curtis, Victoria, B.C
2005 401 Richmond- Salon 401, Thesis Exhibition. Curator: Ontario College of Art & Design, Toronto, Ontario
2003 Le Gallery, Christmas Sale. Curator: Will Kucey, Toronto, Ontario
2002 OCAD Gallery- Roots Show. Curator: Christine Swiderski. Toronto, Ontario

Publications & Interviews

2022 Interview in Architectural Digest España - Sep/16/2022
2018 New Horizons: The Art of Wandering. Publisher: Chronicle Books, California
2018 Interview with BBC Persian's Najieh Gholami translated title "Shirin Sahba: World Citizen"
2012 Painting for Mohsen Makhmalbaf's film poster for "The Gardener"

Shirin Sahba b. 1982, Iran

Shirin Sahba
b. 1982, Iran