Bita Fayyazi became known internationally in the 1990s for her witty, captivating installations of thousands of outsize ceramic cockroaches. Since then, she has incorporated elements of sculpture, installation and site-specific performance, featuring pregnant women, little man-like imp, wretched, run-over dogs; inquisitive, gossipy crows; and ostensibly animate lizards that appeared to scuttle across the gallery floor.
Read MoreBita Fayyazi's work repeatedly addresses questions and problems of the modern and post-modern civilization, for example in her installation 'Kismet', which represented Iran at the 2005 Venice Biennale, her golden babies suspended in mid air, dissociated from the reality they find themselves in. Her most recent major installation’ The Grind’ exhibited as part of Gallery IVDE's platform at Art Dubai 2011 was a dense, troubling assessment of contemporary social hierarchies and the short-circuiting, suffocating effect of redundant ideology and futile optimism of a closed society. Using her trademark baby figures amidst dense thickets of threads and metallic superstructure, the piece represented a summation of Fayyazi’s deep concern with the restrictive and manipulative effects of ‘the machine’ of modern life.
Part of the vanguard of post-revolutionary Iranian artists to exhibit in the West, she rose quickly to prominence and has since shown in galleries in Europe, India, Africa and Middle East. Her work is acquired by collections worldwide, including La Fabrica (Benetton Group Communication Centre) in Italy and the Simon de Pury Collection in Geneva.
Fayyazi is regarded as one of the most progressive and influential contemporary artists to have emerged from Tehran in recent times. Considered a key supporter and patron of the new wave of Iranian artists, she has collaborated with key talents including Rokni Haerizadeh in 2009's ‘There Goes The Neighbourhood’, at Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde. In May 2010, she showed at Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery in Paris, coinciding with a major performance and installation at the Fondation Louis Vuitton.
With over 15 years experience working in sculpture and ceramics, Fayyazi spent seven years living in the UK before returning to Iran in 1980, where she currently works and teaches in a private studio in Tehran.
