Morehshin Allahyari

She Who Sees the Unknown (2017–2020) is a long-term research based project that uses 3D modeling, 3D scanning, 3D printing, and storytelling to re-create monstrous female/queer figures of Middle Eastern origin, using the traditions and myths associated with them to explore the catastrophes of colonialism, patriarchism and environmental degradation.[8] through 3D printed sculptures of [[jinn] and monsters of the Middle East. This body of work has many components to it: an archive of the monstrous and jinn figures with related research and materials, as well as installations, text, video, and the 3D printed sculptures of the jinn.[9] Two of the jinn sculptures are Huma and Ya'jooj Ma'jooj. Allahyari describes this work as actions that "offer another method to re-situate power,” she told The Verge in an article, by Lizzie Plaugic, "Through researching dark goddesses, monstrous, and jinn female figures of Middle Eastern origin, poetic-speculative storytelling, re-appropriation of traditional mythologies, collaging, meshing, 3D scanning, 3D printing, and archiving."

She Who Sees the Unknown has been shown at Transfer Gallery, Upfor Gallery, Hartware Media Art Association, the New York Armory,[10] Moscow Museum of Modern Art,[11] New Museum, among others.

In continuance with themes of all-powerful feminine and queer jinn from Arab mythology, Allahyari debuted "The Laughing Snake" (2018), a web project co-commissioned by The Whitney Museum, Liverpool Biennale, and FACT.[12] The resultant work is an interactive browser-based experience consisting of hyperlinked poetry, soundscapes and 3D animations hosted on Whitney Museum's Artnet portal.[13] The work uses the myth of a jinn to explore the status of women, sexual desire, and the female body in the Middle East. According to the original myth appearing in the fourteenth and fifteenth-century Arabic manuscript Kitab al-bulhan (Book of Wonders), the Laughing Snake had taken over a city, murdering its people and animals while numerous attempts to kill her remained unsuccessful. An old man finally destroyed the snake by holding up a mirror to her, which made her laugh so hard at her reflection that she died. Using images of the snake and the mirror, Allahyari takes us through a labyrinthine online narrative that mixes personal and imagined stories to address topics such as femininity, sexual abuse, morality, and hysteria. The snake emerges as a complex figure, reflecting multifaceted and sometimes distorted views of the female, and refracting images of otherness and monstrosity.[14]

Like Pearls (2014) is a collection and glitched conglomeration of sex and romance spam from Allahyari's Farsi email and from online underwear shops in Iran.[15] She layered GIFs with beating hearts, blooming flowers, flying birds, and moving butterflies on top of the advertisements.[16] Allahyari points out the social and cultural phenomena at work with the advertisements, citing Islamic law in Iran for the reason that the female body is censored and yet simultaneously sexualized. "Like Pearls" is intentionally uncomfortable and disruptive, to draw attention to the objectification and misogyny female bodies face.[17] In an interview with Hyperallergic, Allahyari says, "the whole female body and even the government’s agenda in Iran to encourage women to wear full hijab/chador is all about censoring the female body. Your body as a woman is always objectified and then censored politically … and culturally".[17]

Material Speculation is a project that is a combination of digital fabrication and 3D printing that "inspects Petropolitical and poetic relationships between 3D Printing, Plastic, Oil, Technocapitalism and Jihad".[18] Part of a group exhibition at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The Missing: Rebuilding the Past, artists use creative means to protest "preventable loss" from destruction in conflict zones in Iraq and Syria.[19] From 2015 to 2016, Allahyari recreated twelve artifacts, all which were original and were destroyed by ISIS in 2015 at Mosul Museum.[20][21] Inside of each artifact there is a USB drive and/or memory card containing all of the research she conducted on the topic, including images, maps, videos, and PDF files. Other artists in the exhibit provide evidence of the violence seen in war, but Allahyari's pieces are indicative of a look towards the future. She is "seeking an institution that is able to preserve the data in a digital archive to provide open access to all this information so others may construct their own 3D models. To her, even that act would be one of resistance".[19] She is creating, through 3D modeling and printing, some of the artifacts destroyed by ISIS.[22]

In early 2016, Allahyari published one of her reconstructions from Material Speculation: ISIS, as well as a dossier of her research, as part of Rhizome's series The Download.[23] Through this commission, her object file for King Uthal was made openly available to anyone for 3D printing. She collaborated with Browntourage[24] to create a virtual tour of 3D prints from the Material Speculation series, PRINT your REALITY. Users touring the virtual gallery may examine the 3D images by rotating them and watch the artist respond to questions about her work.[25]

This body of work received attention from current news outlets such as Vice's Creators Project,[26] Vice's Motherboard,[27][28] AJ+,[29] CBC,[30] Huffington Post,[31] and Wired among many others.[32]

Allahyari's first series of Dark Matter casts a critical gaze on her home country and their censorship practices.[33] Using 3D printing, Allahyari makes objects that either forbidden in her country or unwelcome by the Iranian government. Dark Matter is a "series of scathing and critical sculptural objects which she models in Maya and 3D prints. Their often humorous juxtapositions highlight ideas forbidden or frowned upon by the current Iranian government".[33] Objects include a dog, a dildo, a satellite dish, a Barbie, a VHS tape, a pig, a gun, Buddha, and Homer Simpson.[34] Allahyari describes this piece, saying, "I want to simultaneously resist and bring awareness about the power that constantly threatens, discourages, and actively works against the ownership of these items in Iran".[34]

The second series of Dark Matter was commissioned by Forever Now to be gifted to NASA to be taken to the International Space Station.[35] "Dark Matter (Second Series)" consists of 3D printed objects that are considered to be socially or culturally unwelcome, particularly in Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea.[36] Of this iteration of Dark Matter, Allahyari states, "Dark Matter is intended to serve as a documentation of the lives we currently live as humans; the dark side, the invisible, the Dystopian lives that a minority (power/government) has created for a majority (people). I am interested in the idea of re-contextualizing and re-positioning these forbidden objects to another time/space".[36] On November 11, 2014, Allahyari discussed her work as art in relation to astronomy with Roger Malina on Creative Disturbance as part of the countdown to the 100th anniversary of birth of Frank Malina.[37]

The 3D Additivist Cookbook,[38] co-devised and edited with Daniel Rourke, is a free 3D PDF compendium of imaginative, provocative works from over 100 world-leading “artists, designers, curators, students, activists and theorist. Released in December, 2016, the works in the Cookbook are a coalescence of recipes, fictions, critical essays, .obj and .stl files, toolkits, templates, blueprints, and methodologies.

Prior to the release of the Cookbook, Allahyari and Rourke released the 3D Additivist Manifesto in March 2015 as a call to push the 3D printer and other creative technologies to their absolute limits and beyond the realm of the speculative. The Manifesto contains a call to action with 16 points of intended mobilizations for the revolution. The 3D Additivist Cookbook came as a response to the Manifesto’s call for Creation as a violent assault on the forces of matter. Allahyari & Rourke’s aim for the Cookbook is not only the expansion of the limits of the 3D printer, but to also the extraction of the raw potential of its machinery.[39]

A portmanteau of additive and activism, #Additivism is a conflation that defines a movement intent on disrupting material, social, computational, and metaphysical realities through provocation, collaboration and science fictional thinking.[40]