The Night of Ascension

Shirazeh Houshiary’s perceptually engaging drawings, paintings, sculptures, and installations address human experiences that are at once universal and deeply personal. Influenced by eastern mysticism, in particular the religious tradition of Sufism, Houshiary’s work embraces seeming contradictions. Night of Ascension/Ascencion exists somewhere between a drawing and a painting and an object and an image. Its concentric rings and calligraphic markings delineate an infinite, almost transcendental space, referencing Muhammad’s flight through the heavens, as narrated in the Koran, and Modernist compositions by artists like Agnes Martin.