Batool Showghi MSDC

Batool Showghi’s multidisciplinary approach to the artist’s book and her mixed media work involve photography, illustration, painting, and textiles. All of which are employed to explore themes of cultural heritage, memory, identity, and loss in very personal ways. Her work is concerned with the experience of women and the way in which this experience relates to cultural and religious boundaries as well as reflecting on the theme of turbulence, immigration, disintegration of the family and the experience of displacement. In response to the recent uprising of Iranian women, Batool has created a series of textile works around the theme of Struggle and Rise of Women.

There is a sense of storytelling and narrative in her work. Batool uses family birth certificates, passports, old photographs and documents to create her pieces. Her work and writings in Farsi are a poetic reflection on her memories, the environment she grew in, the family, and a city which was lost during the war. These visual autobiographical artworks are designed to narrate and show the beauty and sadness of this struggle which will always be there… Her figures come to life on canvas. The sewing machine and its needle are her drawing tools. She creates these heads, bodies, and hands intuitively, as if they look at the audience and question their plight. There is a sense of solidarity and movement between them. They know that they will succeed and overcome their struggle.

Showghi was born in Iran and moved to England in 1985. She received a merit for her MA in Design & Media Arts from the University of Westminster in 1997.

Batool’s Mixed Media work and artist’s books can be found at: The Tate Britain, British Library, The Royal Navy Museum in Portsmouth, The Museum of Art and Literature, Yerevan, Armenia, and in many public and private collections.

Showghi's work was shown at Collect 2024. She has regular exhibitions at the Jaggedart gallery in London. In 2023 she had a solo show at The Ally Pally and at Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Shows. She shows her artist's books at the Small Publisher's Fairs, The Society of book binders and at BABE (Bristol Artist Book Event).

Batool was twice the prize winner of the People's Choice at the SDC exhibitions at Oxmarket Gallery in Chichester in 2021 and at the Bankside gallery in 2022.

Showghi's work can be found in public and private collections, e.g. The Tate Britain (has now six artist's books in their collection), The British Library (BT has four books in their collections), The Royal Navy Museum in Portsmouth (five books for the ‘New Found Treasures’ exhibition), the Museum of Art and Literature, Yerevan, Armenia, Middlesex University, Thames Valley and Canterbury University, the Aaran Gallery in Tehran, and in many private collections.