Iranian American artist features stories about her parents in a new exhibit The World Sep. 12, 2023 · 3:45 PM EDT Bianca Hillier Sheida Soleimani grew up hearing about her parents’ political activism in Iran, and their eventual escape to the US to avoid persecution. Now, she’s sharing their stories in a new exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. The World’s Bianca Hillier met Soleimani at the museum to learn more.
Artists to Watch This Month: 10 Solo Gallery Exhibitions to Seek Out in September in New York Annikka Olsen September 6, 2023 Sheida Soleimani, Khoy (2021). Courtesy of the artist and Denny Gallery. September marks the end of summer, back to school, return to office—and the start of art-fair season. Coinciding with Armory Week in New York, dozens of gallery exhibitions are opening across the city this week. From emerging artists debuting at new galleries and established artists presenting new bodies of…Read More
10 Standout Gallery Exhibitions to See during Armory Week 2023 Annabel Keenan Sep 4, 2023 11:26AM September marks the start of the busy fall schedule for the art industry. In New York, collectors, curators, and dealers descend on the city for the ever-growing list of fairs. Mostly taking place the second weekend in September—with VIP previews on the 6th and 7th, depending on the event—the roster of fairs is centered on the heavy-hitting Armory Show, which returns this year to the…Read More
PHOTOGRAPHERS ON PHOTOGRAPHERS: VICENTE CAYUELA IN CONVERSATION WITH SHEIDA SOLEIMANI By Vicente Cayuela August 18, 2023 ©Sheida Soleimani, Lachrymatory Agent, 2014, courtesy the artist Striking a delicate balance between shedding light on politically challenging issues and maintaining ethical sensitivity within a historically unethical medium has been a recurring theme throughout Sheida Soleimani’s decade-spanning journey in the art world. In her meticulously crafted and, at times, cryptic still lifes and tableaux, Soleimani exposes the strains in U.S. and Middle East…Read More
Sheida Soleimani – On Subversion The Messy Truth – Conversations on Photography By Gem Fletcher Sheida Soleimani’s work explores intersections of art and activism. She melds sculpture, performance, film and photography to highlight critical perspectives on events across the Middle East, unpicking the complex power dynamics between the region and Western nations. Her work interrogates the dissemination of information in digital contexts, adapting found images from press and social media leaks to exist within alternative scenarios. In doing this, she’s…Read More
Meet Multimedia Artist and Activist Sheida Soleimani – Picter Blog AUGUST 6, 2023 Katharina Siegel “What a Revolutionary Must Know”, 2022 – Courtesy of Denny Gallery and Sheida Soleimani. Sheida Soleimani is an Iranian-American multimedia artist, activist, and professor. Her innovative works in ‘constructed’ tableau photography spark dialogues on the intersection of art and protest, particularly emphasizing ongoing human rights violations in Iran. When and how did you first get involved with photography and arts? What initially…Read More
Check out an Iranian-American artist’s new exhibit at the MFA “Banner Project” is a new photography exhibit by Sheida Soleimani, who incorporates collage into her elaborate photo scenes. Sheida Soleimani, Dissident (detail), 2023. Archival pigment print. Courtesy of the artist and Denny Gallery, New York, Edel Assanti, London, and Harlan Levey Projects, Brussels. © Sheida Soleimani. By Natalie Gale July 3, 2023 The MFA puts on a new photography exhibit by Providence, R.I.-based artist Sheida Soleimani this…Read More
Her parents fled Iran. Her art tells their story Iranian-American artist Sheida Soleimani tells her family history through her photography, after years of creating political works Lilah Raptopoulos May 12, 2023 This is an audio transcript of the FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Her parents fled Iran. Her art tells their story’ Sheida Soleimani So we see this photographic image of this mud brick-looking house in the ruins. You know, it looks a little in shambles. These are…Read More
Her parents survived prison and separation to flee Iran. Her art tells their story Photographer Sheida Soleimani’s sumptuous collages reveal dark truths about exile and trauma Lilah Raptopoulos MAY 3 2023 Sheida Soleimani sits with me in the back of a gallery in Tribeca, New York. Behind us are some pieces of her earlier work, but we’re gazing, on a laptop, at images of her newest. Specifically, we’re looking at a photograph she took of…Read More
Eyes on Iran at FDR Four Freedoms Park Looks to the UN By Ilana Herzig January 6, 2023 In early December, over 300 volunteers crowded onto the lawn of New York’s Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms State Park, designed by Louis Kahn. The crowd gathered to form a waving embodiment of the free-flowing hair of Nika Shahkarami, a 16-year-old girl found dead after joining a protest in Tehran in September over the death, in police custody, of Mahsa Amini. As part…Read More
With ‘Eyes on Iran,’ Artists Bring Protests to Roosevelt Island At the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms State Park, across from the United Nations, an exhibition has an undeniable mood of urgency. Sheida Soleimani, “Mahsa” (2022) at “Eyes on Iran” at Roosevelt Island, part of an artists’ response to the death of Mahsa Amini in Tehran in police custody in September.Credit…Austin Paz/for Freedoms By Will Heinrich Published Dec. 8, 2022Updated Dec. 9, 2022 A hand holds a burning white…Read More
Artist Sheida Soleimani The world must keep our eyes on the brave citizens of Iran and open to the possibility of justice. We have our #EyesonIran and stand in solidarity with the movement to remove the Islamic Republic of Iran from the Commission for the Status of Women. Sign the petition at bit.ly/IRIoffCSW EYES ON IRAN ART ACTIVATION FACES THE UN IN NEW YORK CITY November 28, 2022 Speakers: Hilary Rodham Clinton, Gissou Nia, Sheida Soleimani, Shirin Neshat…Read More
Sheida Soleimani’s Art Is for the Birds The artist’s home and studio in Providence, R.I., is, among other things, a wildlife clinic. By Marisa Mazria-Katz Aug. 9, 2022 Sheida Soleimani speaks the language of birds, deftly contorting her lips and breath to recite lilting sounds with distinct avian fluency. As far as the Iranian American artist is concerned, it’s her second language after Farsi. “Before I could speak English, I used to listen to bird sounds on tape,” says Soleimani,…Read More
By Dr. Jordan Amirkhani Portrait of Sheida Soleimani during the installation of her solo exhibition at Providence College Galleries as part of the “On The Wall” series. Photo by Mel Taing for Boston Art Review. “The exile knows that in a secular and contingent world, homes are always provisional.[…] Seeing ‘the entire world as a foreign land’ makes possible originality of vision. Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of…Read More
By Pearl Fontaine May 4, 2022 The New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) returns to New York City for its 8th edition, which will be open at Pier 36 from May 5—8. Here, fairgoers will find exhibitions from 120 international presenters, along with a program featuring conversations, performances, and other events. Sheida Soleimani, “Cloud Busting,” 2022, 40 x 30 in, archival pigment print; courtesy of the artist and Denny Dimin Gallery. Highlights to look out for in the…Read More
Critique and Care: Sheida Soleimani Interviewed by Cassie Packard Photomontages that expose power and brutality. Sheida Soleimani’s collapsed images teem with signification. The Iranian American artist, who lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, constructs elaborate tableaux that incorporate an array of symbolic objects (bubble gum, toilet paper) and found source imagery (aerial views of oil fields, crooked politicians’ gesturing hands). Compressed into two-dimensional photographs with the seductive gloss of an internet aesthetic, these scenes deliver searing critiques of global systems…Read More
The opening of Ariana Papademetropolous’s solo exhibition included the release of domestic doves into the city, where they are susceptible to predators and malnourishment. by Sarah Rose Sharp September 15, 2021 Some images below depict birds injured as a result of being released into environments to which they are ill-suited to survive. The ethical conundrum of using live animals as art materials is not a new issue in the art world — a place where aesthetics are considered a cause worth dying…Read More
Fun can take many forms. An end-of-day ice cream ritual. Caring for rescued chickens. A bubble bath for an inanimate friend. Three photographers show us what a good time means to them now. Produced by Jolie Ruben and Amanda Webster / Interviews by Raillan Brooks Sheida Soleimani Sheida Soleimani, a Providence, R.I., photographer, says she began doing “tedious but beautiful work, like picking dandelions from the ground, separating the petals from the calyx and putting them in an airlock-sealed jar with yeast to ferment.”…Read More
Sheida Soleimani was commissioned by the New York Times to consider what fun looks like now. This image was taken by Soleimani, who said she began doing “tedious but beautiful work, like picking dandelions from the ground, separating the petals from the calyx, and putting them in an airlock-sealed jar with yeast to ferment.” Soleimani started taking film photographs like this one “to document these forays and efforts to explore whatever we were doing one week to another.”
by Camryn Drabenstadt April 2nd, 2021 Sheida Soleimani is an Iranian-American artist who makes artwork at the intersection of installation, sculpture, and photography, which deals with themes of power, materiality, and violence in the context of American conflict in the Middle East. Soleimani speaks with Silver Eye Scholar and Point Park University Senior Camryn Drabenstadt her about her new work, Levers of Power, which was shown in a solo-exhibition at Denny Dimin Gallery in New York City in November and December of 2020. Camryn Drabenstadt: How has…Read More
Denny Dimin Gallery Announces Representation of Sheida Soleimani Denny Dimin Gallery is honored to announce the representation of artist Sheida Soleimani. Born to political refugees who fled Iran in the mid-1980s, Soleimani builds photographic tableaux that dramatize Middle Eastern geopolitics, satirizing the reporting of West and East alike. In working across form and medium—especially photography, sculpture, collage, and film—she often appropriates source images from popular/digital media and resituates them within defamiliarizing tableaux. The composition depends on the question at hand. For example,…Read More
Sheida Soleimani B. 1990, Indianapolis, Indiana. Lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island. —Isabelle Sakelaris The daughter of politically engaged Iranian refugees, Sheida Soleimani creates works that address world events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and violence against women, by examining power structures through a feminist lens. In an interview with the British Journal of Photography, Soleimani remarked, “I consider my work a feminist practice, because it’s associated with the so-called female practices of cutting, making, and even care-taking.” Whether using found material…Read More
Women Artists of New England: Sheida Soleimani Hall Rockefeller As a photographer who captures images of elaborate stage-like sets, Sheida Soleimani is engaged with contradictory modes. Photography is a medium whose authenticity we still trust, even after the wide proliferation (and increasing sophistication) of Photoshop. Theater is somewhat of its opposite, allowing an audience to believe in something temporarily, though the delusion is only participated in partly. We are not surprised when we go backstage to see that the set…Read More
Tracing Networks of Political Corruption in Sheida Soleimani’s Slick, Hyper-Stylized Tableaux “Hotbed” zeroes in on the places where these power relations and abuses between the US and Iran make themselves most visible. by Cassie Packard December 18, 2020 Installation view of Sheida Soleimani: Hotbed, Denny Dimin, 2020 (all images courtesy Denny Dimin) The compressed, hyper-stylized images in Sheida Soleimani’s first New York City solo show bring a critical eye to the tense relationship between the US and Iran, as well as the corruption that…Read More
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