Urok Shirhan

Urok Shirhan (Netherlands/Iraq) is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of performance, visual arts, and critical theory. Her practice explores the politics and poetics of sound, image, and speech in relation to power and affect.

Working with sound, language, and (moving) images, her research often emerges from questions informed by her biography and family’s history of political struggle and perpetual (forced) migrations.

Ideas and gestures that subvert dominant, conservative, and oppressive narratives and misconceptions are of particular interest: whether related to love, politics, or art, her practice is invested in understanding these mechanisms and the ways in which they are – however subtly – expressed in day-to-day interactions, images, and sounds. Urok’s latest body of research considers the role of sound (and the voice in particular) in relation to forms of collectivity, dissidence, and belonging.

In 2020 and 2021 Urok hosted the monthly live radio show “Sound Without Image”, as well as the occasional “Hour of Liberation”, a live talk show with voices from and for Palestine. Both programs were hosted on Radio Alhara, broadcasting from Bethlehem, Palestine.

Her texts have been published with Infrasonica; The Derivative at the Beirut Art Center; Sonic Continuum at Nottingham Contemporary; and PrintRoom in Rotterdam.

Urok holds an MA (Hons.) in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths University in London. She has been in residence at the Delfina Foundation in London and held research fellowships at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst in Utrecht; the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in Amsterdam; Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, and Ashkal Alwan in Beirut.

Recent presentations include Pickle Bar (Berlin); Tavros (Athens); Gallery TPW (Toronto); Stroom (Den Haag); The Contemporary Art Museum of Crete (Rethymno); e-flux Film & Video platform; Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons (Utrecht); Theater of Operations at MoMA PS1 (New York); Post Opera at TENT (Rotterdam); and Live Works at the 38th Drodesera Festival (Dro, Italy).

Urok Shirhan is a participant of the Onassis AiR Extended Research Residencies program for 2024/25.