Xeen

Xeen is the solo electronic music project of Zhina Ardalan, an Iranian-born musician and visual artist born in Tehran in 1996, currently based in Paris, France. She began playing electric guitar at age 13 and completed her studies in visual communication and interactive graphics at the Islamic Azad University in Tehran in 2019, the same year she was awarded the Photography Prize at the Fajr Visual Arts Festival. In 2016 she co-founded The Finches, an all-female underground indie rock band in Tehran — in a country where women were forbidden from performing publicly, the band still released two EPs and played numerous underground shows. She launched her solo project Xeen in 2019, moving toward experimental electronics, distorted vocals, dense textures, and broken rhythms. In late 2019 she co-founded Stereotype, an electro-rock duo with producer Meshcut, which gained international attention through platforms including Arte Concert and United We Stream. She has released music on Noise à Noise and appeared on the 'Sounds From the Iranian Ultraverse' (2022) compilation. She has performed internationally, including at Klangteppich III in Berlin (2021) with tuba player Orlando de Boeykens as the duo Boeykens/XEEN — a live cross-border performance between Istanbul and Berlin celebrating noise, microtonality, reduction, and opulence.