The Breeder Gallery presents the first solo exhibition in Athens, Greece by Iranian photographer Shirana Shahbazi from 14 March to 24 April. Inspired by old masters, Shahbazi stages and rearranges still lifes, which she photographs and develops in spatial installations in combination with other photos. Motifs such as skulls, shells, butterflies and fruit are featured often in Shahbazi's work. The artist removes these symbols from their usual context and allows their pictorial quality to assume greater prominence.

As curator Katya Garcia Anton states, "Shahbazi's images do not focus on the essential of the subject photographed, as was usual in modernist photography, but on the process of its identification and, as a result, her work presents the spectator with a veritable anatomy of viewing."

The language developed by Shirana Shahbazi in her work allows her subjects to maintain a distinct dignity in the contemporary image-saturated world. It is a triple translation, as art critic Michele Robecchi notes, through which the artist stages her own allegory of memory and time, making visible the redefinitions that take place when memories overlap. Yet Shahbazi's pictures, according to curator Beatrix Ruff, are "unpolitical", in the sense that no opinions or evaluations are suggested and no final interpretations are possible, but they are "political" in that they make room for hybrids and set a course for open-ended discourse that is vital to civilisation today.

Shirana Shahbazi was born in Tehran in 1974 and now lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. Her work is included in numerous public collection, including the Tate Modern in London, MUSAC, Museo de Arte Contremporaneo de Castilla y Leon, Spain, the National Museum of Photography in Copenhagen, Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, Fotomuseum Winterhur and Kunstmuseum Thun in Switzerland, the Photographer's Gallery in London and Helmhaus in Zurich.

Don't miss the photography exhibition by Shirana Shahbazi at the Breeder Gallery in Athens, Greece.