Shadi Zahiri

In traditional and ancient societies, fate was understood as something predetermined, a fixed reality that individuals and communities were expected to accept rather than question or intervene in. Over time, this idea was increasingly challenged by the concept of chance, a notion deeply intertwined with human experience. In my practice, I explore the relationship between fate, chance, and human consciousness, questioning how much of reality is shaped by contingency and uncertainty, and how much is influenced by conscious and unconscious human intervention. In these works, I take chance as the starting point. I work with materials whose properties initially resist direct control, allowing accidental and emergent forms to appear. From this point, I intervene in the process, organizing and directing these evolving structures. This process creates a relational field of formation, where the accidental and the intentional continuously redefine one another. In this sense, form is not a fixed outcome, but a condition in becoming, shaped through pressure, intervention, and transformation. Within this process, I examine how much of the initial trace of chance remains, and how much is transformed through conscious decision-making. The work operates as an unstable system of formation in which control and lack of control continuously act upon one another.