Urok Shirhan is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of performance, visual arts and critical theory. Her practice explores the politics and poetics of sound, image and speech in relation to power and affect. As an Iraqi-born, once asylum-seeker turned Dutch citizen, issues surrounding identity and displacement are of particular interest, and her projects are often informed by her family’s history of political migrations. Urok’s latest body of research considers the role of sound (and the voice in particular) in relation to forms of collectivity, dissidence and belonging.

Urok holds an MA (Hons.) in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths University in London and was a Research Fellow at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst in 2019/2020. She has been in residence at the Delfina Foundation in London and held fellowships at the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in Amsterdam; Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht and Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, Lebanon.

Recent presentations include the Mosaic Rooms in London (forthcoming); the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Germany; the Derivative at the Beirut Art Center; The City Talks Back icw Theatrum Mundi at Onassis Stegi, Athens; Casco Institute Working for the Commons, Utrecht; Theater of Operations at MoMA PS1, New York; Post Opera at TENT, Rotterdam; Live Works at the 38th Drodesera Festival, Italy; 5th Biennial for Young Art at NCCA, Moscow and Sonic Continuum at the Nottingham Contemporary. As of October 2020 Urok hosts 'Sound Without Image': a monthly live show on Radio Alhara, broadcasting from Bethlehem, Palestine.