Shahrzad Rahmani is a freelance stage and costume designer and scenographer based in Berlin. She is also part of the artist collective Guerilla Architects.
Her work focuses on interdisciplinary spaces and installations in theatrical, urban and performance contexts. She experiments with different materials and their dialogue, fusion, and spatial transformation. Political contextualization and storytelling about migration, intersectional feminism and marginalized narratives form the core of her artistic work.
She will be an Artistic Guest Professor Bertolt Brecht in 2023/24 at the University of Leipzig.
Shahrzad has collaborated closely with choreographers Modjgan Hashemian and Jo Parks as well as with directors Marie Bues, Niko Eleftheriadis, Alicia Agustín, Keng Sen Ong, Isabella Sedlak, Yony Leyser, Ayham Majid Agha, the artist collective Talking Straight and the Journalist Can Dündar. The houses she has worked with/at include: radialsystem, Hebbel am Ufer, Maxim Gorki Theater, Uferstudios, Tischlerei der deutschen Oper, Schaubude, Theater Thikwa, Theater an der Parkaue, Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik, Akademie der Künste, Nationaltheater Mannheim, Staatstheater Hannover, Theater Rampe in Stuttgart and Schauspielhaus Vienna.
In 2021, as part of the concept group for the House for Dance and Choreography in Berlin, they developed a concept idea for the NESTT (Neuer Standort für Tanz und Transformation).
She held the position of deputy head of stage design manager at Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin for the season of 2017, after being an assistant stage designer for two years.
She was in charge of the Herbstsalon’s scenography at Maxim Gorki Theatre from 2015 to 2019 in addition to creating the stage for „Eating Refugees” by the Center for Political Beauty in 2016 and Talking Straight “Science Center” Performances.
Shahrzad was involved in exhibitions at ZKM Karlsruhe, MIT Boston, Guggenheim Museum New York City, ZKU Berlin, n.b.k. Berlin and Berlinische Galerie and they were awarded in „Radikal Jung 2018“ with “Skelett eines Elefanten in der Wüste” from Ayham Majid Agha and “Mülheimer Dramatikpreis 2022” for „WOUNDS ARE FOREVER“ from Sivan Ben Yishai and directed from Marie Bues. The film “Becoming Salome” by Keng Sen Ong, in which she participated as an art director, was shown at the Singapore International Festival of Arts in 2022.
With her collective Guerilla Architects she dedicates herself to an artistic practice that is research-based, site-specific and socially engaged with the tensions between space, body and performative installations in an urban political context.
In 2019 they created the film “Language of Speculation” (Arch+, n.b.k., Berlin Art Week) in the course of their critical examination of urban politics. They continued to work on issues of urban space in collaboration with Alicia Agustín and radialsystem with additional immersive performances – “1km2 Berlin – the Tragedy of the Open City“ – in 2020 -2021 in Berlin. Since the summer of 2022, they have developed different interventions and performances at Mehringplatz Berlin, including the performative installation “mehringplatzen!” with Hebbel am Ufer “Berlin bleibt #4”.
Born in Karlsruhe, Germany and raised in Tehran, Iran, Shahrzad has a master’s of Stage Design and Scenograohy from TU Berlin “Bühnenbild_Szenischer Raum” and a Diploma in Architecture from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).