“I use mirrors to connect earth and sky—to reveal a hidden dialogue between what is above us and what we stand on.”
— Shirin Abedinirad
— Shirin Abedinirad
In the practice of Shirin Abedinirad, the landscape becomes both stage and participant. Her work intervenes lightly yet decisively—introducing reflective surfaces into deserts, railways, and open terrains, not to alter them, but to reveal what already exists within them: symmetry, illusion, and quiet rupture.
Mirrors are her primary medium, but they are never neutral. Embedded into sand or aligned along paths, they fracture continuity and invite a reconsideration of space. The ground opens to the sky; distance collapses into proximity. What appears stable becomes uncertain, and what is absent suddenly emerges.
Her compositions resist spectacle in favor of precision. Each placement is measured, each reflection intentional. The result is a subtle reorientation of perception—an invitation to step outside habitual seeing and encounter the world as something momentarily reassembled.
One of the first uses of mirrors in architecture was in Persepolis, Persia at the Tachara Palace. Glossy black stones were polished till their surface was reflective, expanding the palace’s size and beauty. 2,000 years later, I return to the concept of doubling space and light with Heaven on Earth, an installation project that was showcased in Italy in 2014.
The basic geometric shapes and symmetrical composition of the mirrors angling up the cement stairs are borrowed from Islamic art, where symmetry is considered the highest form of beauty. For me, the use of mirrors is integral to creating a paradise; mirrors give light, an important mystical concept in Persian culture.
Standing in front of the staircase, the audience is facing a transformative view of themselves, and their notion of how the world is structured. When the audience stands at the top of the stairs and looks down, they come face to face with an optical illusion that increases their light, and therefore their spirituality of the space. The very physics of nature are turned on their head- the sky is now the ground- and the light of the sun is magnified around the viewer. The blue sky spills onto the ground, mimicking a pool, and the audience is momentarily overcome with the desire to jump into the light.
Standing in front of the staircase, the audience is facing a transformative view of themselves, and their notion of how the world is structured. When the audience stands at the top of the stairs and looks down, they come face to face with an optical illusion that increases their light, and therefore their spirituality of the space. The very physics of nature are turned on their head- the sky is now the ground- and the light of the sun is magnified around the viewer. The blue sky spills onto the ground, mimicking a pool, and the audience is momentarily overcome with the desire to jump into the light.
In Evocation, I tackle one of the formidable problems with desert dwelling: the lack of water. Exhibited in Iran Central Desert in 2013, this land art installation uses the reflective power of mirrors to bring quenching blue pools of “water” to the sand.
It is the ultimate mirage in the desert. At first glance, the mirrored circles, partially covered in the golden sand, appear to be small ponds. Only after a moment do we realize that it is actually the sky, reflected across the dunes. By altering our perception of nature and offering us a false narrative, the work challenges the relationship between the human mind and the fundamental elements of nature.
In the vast openness of the desert, where no one watches and the horizon swallows sound, I placed rectangular mirrors as silent portals. Within this concealed freedom, the body could appear, vanish, and reassemble — free to exist beyond the reach of authority.
The installation was temporary, existing only for the moment we were there. It could not be public; in Iran, such images would be forbidden. The act of making it was itself a quiet defiance — a fleeting moment of autonomy in an environment that both exposes and protects.
The mirrors fractured and remade the human form, breaking it into shifting fragments of light and absence. In these reflections, the figure seems to step into nothingness, to float above the earth, to inhabit an impossible horizon. Illusion became a space of freedom — a place where the self could dissolve and return, untethered from the rules that bind it.
Concept by Shirin Abedinirad
Photography by Mehdi Teimory
Photography by Mehdi Teimory
Across these works, Shirin Abedinirad constructs a language of quiet disruption. The mirror, simple in form, becomes a tool for dismantling certainty—dividing the body, extending the horizon, or inserting the sky into the earth.
There is no permanence in these gestures. Wind will cover the sand, light will shift, and the installations will vanish. Yet this ephemerality is central to their meaning. The work does not seek to endure as object, but to persist as perception.
What remains is a heightened awareness: of space, of self, and of the fragile boundary between what is seen and what is assumed. In this fleeting alignment of elements, the world reveals itself not as fixed, but as endlessly negotiable—an image in constant transformation.
Images & words courtesy of Shirin Abedinirad
