Sherin Guirguis
Sherin Guirguis was born in Luxor, Egypt, and currently lives in Los Angeles, CA. She received her BA from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and her MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Through her practice, Guirguis audits the symphony of difference and the complexity present in the politics of place. Using site, text and recovered histories as the core of each series, she develops projects that engage audiences in a dialogue about power, agency, and social transformation through art. Her research based practice is a means to heighten the understanding of marginalized and contested histories, in particular those of women that have often been forgotten and/or erased. She aims to make the often invisible work of historically underrecognized women visible once more. The work engages both formal and social concerns by juxtaposing the reductive Western language of minimalist aesthetics with that of Eastern ornamentation. Studying available archives and interviewing community members and leaders, Guirguis cross-pollinates architecture, text, and narratives that translate into paintings, sculptures and site-specific installations to reactivate lost narratives. The work problematizes the history of decoration and ornamentation and its relationship with social structures, cultural identity and Women’s agency. The connection between the materials, formal aspects and content is crucial to the stories’ retelling: materials, colors, and patterns are the visual language through which viewers can access these histories and, through abstraction, experience a sensory activation of the liminal experience of migration.
Guirguis has had solo museum exhibitions at the Craft Contemporary Museum of Los Angeles (2018) and the American University’s Tahrir Cultural Center, Cairo (2019). Her work was featured in Desert X 2017 and 2020 and has been shown internationally in Dubai, Sharjah, UAE; Guadalajara, Mexico; Frankfurt, Germany and Venice, Italy. Guirguis’ artworks are in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Minnesota Museum of American Art, Orange County Museum of Art; the Houston Museum of Fine Art; and the Las Vegas Museum of Contemporary Art. Her art has also been acquired by the Public Art Commission of the Metropolitan Authority of Los Angeles and by the U.S. Department of State, Art in Embassies program.
She has been awarded several prestigious grants and fellowships including, the Zumberge Diversity and Equity Award, 2021, 2014-2015 City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship, the 2012 California Community Foundation Visual Artist Fellowship, and the Investing in Artists Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation. Reviews and features have examined her work in ArtForum, Canvas, New York Times, The Guardian, Brownbook, Canvas, Flash Art, Art LTD, Beautiful/Decay, Los Angeles Times and Artweek, among others.
