Artist Statement/ Biography

Through sculpture, performance, and installation, Sheyda Azar explores the body’s resistance against non-consensual control. They create immersive, sensorial, and ritually-driven scenarios and experiences which subvert male-oriented practices, desiring to annihilate the systemic violence long-imposed on womxn and marginalized bodies. Their objects present somatic elements of a morphic nature, fragmented, fetishized, or hybridized with animalistic features, clawed and hooked, taut skin over cold, hard, and sleek steel; they are insurgent sculptures, facilitating the perpetual cycle of manifestation and destruction. Abject substances—blood, urine, hair, nails, and bones—incarnate liminal scenes and confront personal/social fears, justice, failure, and impermanence within an evolving sculptural ecosystem. Their practice relies on the elemental collaboration with fire using skills rooted in foundry, metal working, and blacksmithing—fields that are commonly prohibited for womxn in MENA nations. By staging her nude body, Sheyda engages in political intervention and enters the primordial states of self-infliction and punishment to pursue radical bodily recontextualization and reclamation.

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Sheyda Azar (Persian: شیدا آذر) is a NY based artist and material explorer whose research on theories of abjection, sexual taboo, and the history of punishment informs their work across sculpture, performance, and installation. They explore realms of terrorization, resistance, and transformation through a visual language grounded in ritualism and BDSM. Sheyda holds a BFA in painting and earned MFAs in Studio Arts from UNC Chapel Hill in 2021, and Sculpture and Dimensional Studies from Alfred University in 2023. They have shown works in galleries, artist-run spaces, and non-profit institutions both in Iran and the US and was a 2024 fellowship awardee of The Vermont Studio Center.
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