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|   Mehri Honarbin-Holliday is a Research Fellow at CCCU, a practising fine artist and ethnographer born in Iran living in Britain. She is affiliated to the London Middle East Institute, and her most recent studio work is entitled 'The Archaeology of Self' comprising of installations of ceramic sculptures and art videos shown internationally. This is an ongoing project which continues to develop and grow. Mehri perceives her art profoundly interrelated with her observations of the archaic landscapes of Iran and female form, through which her visual and art-historical heritage from both East and West meet. Instinctively, she creates works emblematic of her psychogeographies where cultural and formal fragments, female in essence, are intent on provoking memories of the qualities in light, textures, and the dance of the 'beloved' in Persian classical poetry. Cultural continuity is at the centre of Mehri's work whether observing and writing about the development of youth culture in contemporary Iran, or in the studio, creating work with clay and making art videos.
Her PhD research was interdisciplinary in social science and fine art. It is entitled: 'Art and Identity; An Ethnographic Study of the Development of Art Education in the Islamic Republic of Iran with the Researcher as a Ceramic Artist in Canterbury'. A spatially perceived sociopolitical deconstruction of the development of art education in Iran since the 1979 Revolution, at Tehran University and Al-Zahra University for Women, Mehri's thesis analyses the structures employed in the design of the curriculum and staffing, further recognizing the role of the private atelier system and Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. She draws on extended empirical data from the field to reflect on the lived and common experiences of the participants. Their personal and collective histories are given in order to reconstruct the bigger picture, illuminating sociopolitical subtleties and reflexive and critical gendered spaces and identities. Mehri's studio practices in Canterbury are employed as a research tool to simultaneously reflect on her own visual and cultural identity as a member of the Iranian Diaspora, and to better understand the efforts of the participants in learning and practicing fine art as a means for expressing their identities. Her book: | |
| | | Mehri is an active member of Campaign Iran at www.campaigniran.co.uk focusing on Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran. | |
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