Dr. Azadeh Fatehrad is an artist and curator based in London. Fatehrad’s research, artistic and curatorial practice are intertwined around a process of gathering information and generating new imagery in response to archival material she discovers. Her interdisciplinary research overlaps discourses such as political science, sociology, representation, photography and architecture, as well as cultural studies.
Her practice ranges from still and moving images to fictional stories, short films and artist books which have been exhibited internationally at the Royal Academy of Art (London), Somerset House (London), Weltkulturen Museum (Frankfurt am Main), Index: The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation (Stockholm), Lychee One Gallery (London) and The Barn Gallery (Oxford), among others.
Fatehrad has received her practice-based PhD from the Royal College of Art (2016) and has conducted diverse projects across Europe and the Middle East, including at the Warburg Institute in London (Iconography: The Representation of Hand Gestures), Archiv für Forschung und Dokumentation Iran (AFDI) in Berlin (National Unity of Women's Associations), the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam (Sediqeh Dowlatabadi's Archive), and the Feminist Library in London (Adventures in the Archives); Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main (Scharf Belichted – Objects of Desire in an Ethnographic Collection) and the Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies (IICHS) in Tehran.
Fatehrad's recent publications including ‘Sohrab Shahid Saless-Exile: Displacement and the Stateless Moving Image' (2020) by Edinburgh University Press, UK and The Poetics and Politics of the Veil in Iran: An Archival and Photographic Adventure (2019) by Chicago University Press. Her projects have been positively covered by the likes of the New York Times, Financial Times, CNN, Euronews, Guardian, and British Journal of Photography, among others. Fatehrad is co-founder of ‘Herstoriographies: The Feminist Media Archive Research Network’ in London and she is on the editorial board for the peer reviewed journal MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden.www.azadehfatehrad.com