Shaghayegh Cyrous

Shaghayegh Cyrous (Persian: شقایق سیروس; born 1987) is an Iranian and American visual artist and curator, who makes interactive time-based investigations, participatory projects, and video installation. She is based in Los Angeles, and previously lived in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Early life Cyrous was born in 1987, in Tehran, Iran. She obtained a BA degree in visual art studies from the University of Science and Culture in Tehran. She lived in Iran until the Iranian Green Movement, when political tensions made her decide to move to the United States in 2011.

She moved to San Francisco, where she graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree in social practice from the California College of Arts (CCA) in 2017.

Career She painted the mural In Memory Of (2015) in Clarion Alley in San Francisco. The mural depicts three famous Iranian women writers - Simin Daneshvar, Simin Behbahani, and Forough Farrokhzad. Cyrous had already created another work there, portraying writers and artists imprisoned in Iran, and Cyrous installed her Lost Rug Project also in Clarion Alley.

Cyrous co-curated Inside Out Iran, an exhibition of Iranian urban art in London in 2015. She was the executive producer of Mutiny of Colours, a feature-length documentary film about street art and graffiti in Iran. She curated the video exhibition Eleven and a Half Hours in Oakland in 2017, displaying the works of the Iranian artist Shirin Abedinirad and the American artist Dionne Lee. Cyrous combined the two with the intention of "blurring lines between the two cultures... making Iran and Oakland feel like the same place." She chose that title because eleven and a half hours is the time difference between San Francisco and Tehran.

Her own work A Window to Tehran, with a video diptych synchronizing the San Francisco sunrise with the Tehran sunset, was based on the same idea. In 2019, Cyrous created The sun will rise the next day, a video installation with the names of political prisoners incarcerated in Iran since the beginning of the Iranian Green Movement in 2011 and until 2019.

In August 2021, Cyrous founded Zamin Project, which aims to connect and represent artists and educators from the SWANA (South West Asian and North African) Community in the San Francisco Bay Area. The project includes initiatives such as discussion panels, artists' interviews, and Zamin Project Archive.

Notable works 2014 - Klozar Weaving, Iran and California 2015 - In Memory Of (mural), Clarion Alley, San Francisco, California 2015 - Inside Out Iran (exhibition curator), London, UK 2016 - A Window to Tehran, Root Division’s galleries, San Francisco, California 2017 - Eleven and a Half Hours (exhibition curator), Oakland, California 2018 - Over Here Not Yet (collaborative work with Renée Rhodes), Royal NoneSuch Gallery, Oakland, California 2018 - East of West, Santa Fe, New Mexico 2019 - Rock E Malta (collaborative work with Kim Epifano) 2019 - The sun will rise the next day, (video installation) at Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco, California 2020 - Reenacting the Future, San Francisco Bay Area, California