Shirazeh Houshiary, artist and sculptor, was born in Shiraz, Iran in 1955. She moved to London in 1974 and studied at the Chelsea School of Art between 1976 and 1979. Houshiary subsequently held a Junior Fellowship at Cardiff College of Art between 1979 and 1980. She was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1994 and was awarded the title of Professor by the London Institute in 1997.

Her first solo exhibition was held in 1980 at the Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff. From the mid-1980s onwards, Houshiary became recognised as one of the leading figures of a new generation of British sculptors. She subsequently established a sustained collaboration with the Lisson Gallery in London, which has continued over several decades.

Her work has been presented in a number of major international exhibitions of contemporary art, including the XLII Venice Biennale (1982), "Les Magiciens de la Terre" at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1989), the São Paulo Biennial (1996), "Without Boundary" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2006), the Sydney Biennale (2010), and the Venice Biennale (2013 and 2017).

Houshiary’s practice, which originated in sculpture, gradually expanded to encompass painting, installation, architectural projects, and film. Her work is frequently concerned with questions of perception, presence, and the instability of being. It draws on a range of intellectual and cultural references, including Sufism and mysticism, Renaissance painting, contemporary physics, and poetry. Through the use of fluid forms, layered veils, written traces, and shifting structures, she seeks to articulate an experience situated at the threshold between the material and the immaterial. This sustained exploration of “breath” and the essence of existence remains central to her practice.