Sammaneh Pourshafighi

Award winning trans-disciplinary artist

About Me

(she/he/they)

Born Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

Working in Melbourne and Gold Coast, Australia

Sammaneh Pourshafighi is a Queer genderfluid Muslim who arrived in Australia as a refugee after the Iranian Revolution and grew up on the problematic paradise of the Gold Coast. A hereditary witch, her ancestral tribes originate from Isfahan, Gilan, and Kurdistan. Her work frequently examines identity politics, mental health, diasporic tensions, ethno- futurism, and the complex relationships between bodies and environments through an intersectional feminist lens.

As part of a trans-disciplinary practice, Pourshafighi’s work encompasses film, performance art, digital art, poetry, collage, painting and photography often with an emphasis on the element of colour, surprising contrasts, autobiographical events, and humour.

Her works have been exhibited at the Immigration Museum, Melbourne and UCLA, United States as well as being published in British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Britain Volume 5. In 2021, she won the Mayoral Prize for the Incinerator Art Award: Art For Social Change and has been a finalist for several awards including the the 2023 National Photographic Portrait Prize at The National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. Pourshafighi is currently co-creating a performance piece feminist arts collective APHIDS as part of the Arts House Culture Lab.

2021

masters in contemporary Art

Victorian College of Art, Melbourne

2009

graduate Dipoloma of Education

AustraLian Catholic University, Melbourne

2005

Bachelor of arts (contemporary Art)

GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY, QUEENSLAND

Photographic Work

Sammaneh Pourshafighi’s photographic work often centres around portraiture, personal relationships, human relationships to their environments, and representation with an emphasis on the element of colour and natural light.

Portrait Of My Mother As An Ethno-Futurist Icon

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Exposed Hair

In 2022, Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini was brutally murdered by Iran’s morality police. Her crime was dressing immodestly and exposing her hair in public. Her tragic death ignited the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement, propelled by citizens demanding greater social freedoms and an end to over four decades of strict Islamic governmental rule. Iranians have demonstrated their outrage at oppressive systems and the patriarchy through an ongoing series of national strikes and protests. One of the most significant gestures of the movement has been women cutting off their own hair. This simple act is a symbol of protest and mourning that goes back to Ferdowsi’s epic poem Shahnameh, written over a thousand years ago.

‘Exposed Hair’ is a on going series of cyanotypes created by arranging hair on sensitized paper and exposing it to ultraviolet light. The hair comes from a collection of Iranian women – including the artist, her mother and her cousin – cut off in solidarity with the movement, and in mourning for Amini and other victims of the patriarchy. The hair is ‘exposed’ in defiance of the regime’s oppressive dress code, forming images of freedom and rebellion. In some pieces, the multitude of strands evoke the tangled complexities of Iran’s history, while in others they resemble clouds in an otherworldly sky, like dreams of a brighter future.

The Devils

A series of handmade monoprints on paper made using the Ebru water marbling technique. Ebru water marbling has histoical roots across many cultures from Türkiye, Iran and SWANA regions. These images are part of an ongoing series of devils, demons and djinn inspired by Persian mythology, Islamic demonology, and sleep paralysis hallucinations.

Art GIFtory

Art GIFtory is a collection of forty animated GIFs of historically famous artworks that have been remixed and recontextualised for the 21st century. Art’s ‘greatest hits’ (Goya, Picasso, Warhol etc) are digitally defaced with animations, stickers, and text, to create infinitely looped GIFs that mock the pomposity of art history. Traditionally the domain of an exclusive canon of dead white men, art history is playfully queered and decolonized by a feminist of colour. Art GIFtory is like a walk through the Louvre or NGV via the features of Instagram’s stories function, with a stop off at the gift shop to purchase a meme.

Imagine Michelangelo’s David as queer icon, covered in tattoos, fanning himself while a baby dinosaur eats flowers at his feet; Van Gogh’s Sunflowers covered in a multitude of blinking eyeballs staring back at you, or Munch’s The Scream replaced with a crying Kim Kardashian in Ray-Bans, while eternally doomscrolling for lols.

Collages

Sammaneh Pourshafighi’s collages are all meticulously handcut paper assemblages. Drawing influences from personal and public archives, dreams and pop culture, Pourshafighi’s remixes different images to create surprising new worlds rich with colorful, surreal overtones.

Sammaneh Pourshafighi

Sammaneh@outlook.com