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 use chance as a starting point. A fluid material such as ink is applied in an accidental and uncontrolled way, generating unstable and emerging forms. From this point, I intervene in the process, organizing and directing these evolving structures.

This process creates a relational field of formation, where what is accidental and what is 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.

This statement also explains how the submitted works relate to the proposed exhibition concept. The works engage directly with the idea of plasticity through processes of instability, transformation, and continuous reconfiguration of form under conditions of chance and intervention.