Shahpour Pouyan in The National

Nick Leech, The National, December 12, 2017

Nick Leech interviews Shahpour Pouyan ahead of the opening of his third solo at Lawrie Shabibi titled My Place is the Placeless .

 

“I’ve tried to create a contrast between the Modernist practice of architecture, anthropology and art and what we have today, which is access to DNA and genetic science and post-modern art and architecture,” Pouyan explains, describing his combination of DNA analysis and heritage as a form of “personal archaeology”. 

 

"At a time when people are talking about identity in terms of the fathers, mothers and grandparents, I am trying to take another approach and take it all the way back, thousands of years,” he says. “It’s very difficult to make borders between identities and that is what I am trying to question. Suggesting that you are from a specific country just doesn’t make sense because so many of those countries were created relatively recently.”