Shirazeh Houshiary was born in Iran in 1955.  Having moved to London in the early 1970’s Houshiary graduated from the Chelsea School of Art in 1979 emerging with a group of artist that included Anish Kapoor and Richard Deacon. In Europe she is well known for her sculptures in which she seeks to investigate spiritual principles and abstract forms. In her first solo exhibition in New York at Lehmann Maupin gallery in 1999 she included paintings that explored her interest in Sufism and the 13th Century mystic poet Jalal al-Din Rumi. The calligraphy was implemented in graphite and repeatedly laced into the luminous surfaces.  In her labor-intensive paintings she unites the word and the canvas into a meditative visual experience. Houshiary describes her work as being about presence.  “Presence is like light- how can you describe it? Light can be only experienced, it has presence.  This work also has a presence and has only to be experienced.” Houshiary has had solo exhibitions at the Musée Rath in Geneva, the Museum of Modern Art Oxford, the Camden Arts Centre in London, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich and the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht among others. In 1994 Houshiary was nominated for the Turner Prize.  Houshiary currently lives and works in London.