Nick Leech interviews Shahpour Pouyan ahead of the opening of his third solo at Lawrie Shabibi titled My Place is the Placeless .
“I’ve tried to create a contrast between the Modernist practice of architecture, anthropology and art and what we have today, which is access to DNA and genetic science and post-modern art and architecture,” Pouyan explains, describing his combination of DNA analysis and heritage as a form of “personal archaeology”.
"At a time when people are talking about identity in terms of the fathers, mothers and grandparents, I am trying to take another approach and take it all the way back, thousands of years,” he says. “It’s very difficult to make borders between identities and that is what I am trying to question. Suggesting that you are from a specific country just doesn’t make sense because so many of those countries were created relatively recently.”
