Shahryar Nashat on Abstraction, Identity, and Digital Bodies in Canvas Interview

Artist Shahryar Nashat explores the tension between physical bodies and digital technology in his practice, emphasizing the need for artistic malleability as these boundaries blur. Based in Berlin and Los Angeles, Nashat works across sculpture, video, photography, and installation, allowing different media to inform one another through a shared focus on color, desire, and restless thinking. He describes abstraction as a political tool that resists categorization and fixed identities, particularly relevant to his experience as a brown artist in Europe. Nashat rejects dialectical approaches to beauty, instead seeking to unsettle viewers through repulsive or perverse aesthetics that challenge conventional seduction. Architecture serves as emotional production design in his exhibitions, creating unfamiliar spaces that sharpen attention. His 2022 work Reverse Rorschach used machine learning to translate real-time biometric data into abstract visuals, with composer Ethan Braun scoring the emotional soundscape. The interview originally appeared in Canvas magazine's Body Language issue (Canvas 119).