Sheida Soleimani

Last updated

Sheida Soleimani (born 1990) is an Iranian-American multimedia artist, activist, and professor. Her works have generated conversations in the field of 'constructed' tableau photography, as well as the intersections of art and protest, [1] with a focus on Iranian human-rights violations. [2]

Contents

Sheida Soleimani
Born1990 (age 32–33)
Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.
Alma mater University of Cincinnati,
Cranbrook Academy of Art
Occupation(s)artist, educator
Years active2015–present
Known forfine artist, activist
Website sheidasoleimani.com

Early life and education

Sheida Soleimani was born in 1990 in Indianapolis, Indiana [3] and she grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. [4] Her parents are political refugees who were persecuted by the Iranian government in the early 1980s during the Iranian Revolution. [5] Soleimani has mentioned her personal experience as an Iranian growing up in America, which made her aware of the "stereotypes of Middle Eastern culture by the West" at a young age. [6] [7]

Soleimani received her BFA degree in photography from the University of Cincinnati in 2012. [8] [9] She continued her studies and received a MFA degree in Photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2015. [10]

Career

Soleimani's work highlights the relationships between powerful political people, groups, governments, and corporations, in order to raise questions from the viewer. [6] [7] The themes of her work are topics not often discussed in the West, for example, highlighting the women executed in Iran, [7] and the relationship between power, exploitation and oil, [11] among others. The work is often displayed as a photograph or video of a staged image, Soleimani uses various materials in the work including, soft sculpture "dolls", photography, props, masks, and cut-outs of digital prints. [12]

Her work has gained international recognitions in exhibitions [13] and on publications such as Artforum , [14] The New York Times, [15] The Huffington Post , [16] Interview (magazine) , [17] Vice (magazine) etc. [18] Soleimani has presented multiple series of works, namely Medium of Exchange (2018-current), [19] [20] To Oblivion (2016), and National Anthem (2015). [2] Soleimani documented her experience during the COVID-19 pandemic with a series of photographs that were featured in The New York Times in 2021. [21] In 2022, Soleimani participated in the group exhibition "Eyes on Iran" at Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms State Park, Roosevelt Island, New York; in response to the Mahsa Amini protests. [22] Other artists in the "Eyes on Iran" exhibition included Shirin Neshat, Sepideh Mehraban, Shirin Towfiq, Icy & Sot, and Aphrodite Désirée Navab. [22]

Soleimani is currently an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at Brandeis University. [23] [10] She previously taught at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). [24]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shirin Neshat</span> Iranian artist, film director, and photographer

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian visual artist who lives in New York City, known primarily for her work in film, video and photography. Her artwork centers on the contrasts between Islam and the West, femininity and masculinity, public life and private life, antiquity and modernity, and bridging the spaces between these subjects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mohsen Namjoo</span> Iranian musician, singer-songwriter (born 1976)

Mohsen Namjoo is an Iranian singer-songwriter, composer and musician. His style of music is influenced by blues and rock as well as Iranian folk music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qasem Soleimani</span> Iranian military officer (1957–2020)

Qasem Soleimani was an Iranian military officer who served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). From 1998 until his assassination in 2020, he was the commander of the Quds Force, an IRGC division primarily responsible for extraterritorial and clandestine military operations. In his later years, he was considered by some analysts to be the right-hand man of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, as well as the second-most powerful person in Iran behind him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sara Rahbar</span> Iranian-born American artist (born 1976)

Sara Rahbar is a contemporary artist. Her work ranges from photography to sculpture to installation, all of which reveal and transform the artist's personal experiences and are intimately autobiographical. Her work explores concepts of nationalism, separation and belonging - driven by central ideas of pain, violence and the complexity of the human condition. Compelled by an instinctual obsession to piece together and dissect, her approach is reflective of her need to deconstruct her emotions and memories.

Akiko Ichikawa is a transdisciplinary artist, editor, and writer-activist based in New York City. She has written on contemporary art and culture for Flash Art,Art in America, Hyperallergic, and zingmagazine. Ichikawa's article on the photography of Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams at Manzanar became popular in fall 2016, following comments by a spokesperson of a Trump-supporting PAC on Fox News.

Ellen Lesperance is an American artist and educator, known for her paintings. Her works are typically gouache paintings that pattern the full-body garments of female activists engaged in Direct Action protests. She is based in Portland, Oregon, and has three children.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Aguhar</span>

Mark Cagaanan Aguhar was an American activist, writer and multimedia fine artist known for her multidisciplinary work about gender, beauty and existing as a racial minority, while being body positive and transgender femme-identified. Aguhar was made famous by her Tumblr blog that questioned the mainstream representation of the "glossy glorification of the gay white male body".

Yishay Garbasz is an interdisciplinary artist who works in the fields of photography, performance and installation. Her main field of interest is trauma and the inheritance of post-traumatic memory. She also works on issues of identity and the invisibility of trans women.

Deana Lawson (1979) is an American artist, educator, and photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work is primarily concerned with intimacy, family, spirituality, sexuality, and Black aesthetics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Morehshin Allahyari</span> Iranian-American new media artist and activist

Morehshin Allahyari is an Iranian media artist, activist, and writer based in New York. Her work questions current political, socio-cultural, and gender norms, particularly exploring the relationship between technology, history, and art activism. Allahyari’s artworks include 3D-printed objects, videos, experimental animation, web art, and publications. As a 2017 Research Resident at Eyebeam, Allahyari also worked on the concept of "Digital Colonialism"; a term she has coined since 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shirin Aliabadi</span> Iranian artist (1973–2018)

Shirin Aliabadi was an Iranian contemporary multidisciplinary visual artist whose work focused on women's issues, gender representation, and the beauty industry. She is best known for depiction of rebellious Iranian women in her Girls in Cars and Miss Hybrid series of photographs.

Taravat Talepasand is an Iranian-American contemporary artist, activist, and educator. She is known for her interdisciplinary painting practice including drawing, sculpture and installation. As an Iranian-American woman, Talepasand explores the cultural taboos that reflect on gender and political authority. Her approach to representation and figuration reflects the cross-pollination, or lack thereof, in our Western Society. Talepasand previously held the title of the chair of the painting department at San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). She is a Tenure-Track professor in Art Practice at Portland State University, College of Art + Design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kameelah Janan Rasheed</span> American writer, educator and artist

Kameelah Janan Rasheed is an American writer, educator, and artist from East Palo Alto, California. She is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts known for her work in installations, book arts, immersive text-based installations, large-scale public text pieces, publications, collage, and audio recordings. Rasheed's art explores memory, ritual, discursive regimes, historiography, and archival practices through the use of fragments and historical residue. Based in Brooklyn, NY, she is currently the Arts Editor for SPOOK magazine. In 2021 her work was featured in an Art 21 documentary, "The Edge of Legibility."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Decolonize This Place</span> Decolonial movement

Decolonize This Place is a movement based in New York City that organizes around Indigenous rights, black liberation, Palestinian nationalism, de-gentrification, and economic inequality. Their actions often take place at museums and cultural institutions and focus on colonialist tendencies within the art world.

Star Montana is a Los Angeles based photographer. Her work has been shown in museums and galleries such as the Vincent Price Art Museum, The Main Museum, ArtCenter, internationally in Brazil, Ecuador, and Mexico, and in the L.A. Metro Vermont/Beverly station from 2014-2016. She has also been featured in articles in Aperture and Hyperallergic.

Clarity Haynes is a queer feminist American artist and writer. She currently lives and works in New York, NY. Haynes is best known for her unconventional painted portraits of torsos, focusing on queer, trans, cis female and nonbinary bodies. She is a former member of the tART Collective and the Corpus VI Collective.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karyn Olivier</span> American artist (born 1968)

Karyn Olivier is a Philadelphia-based artist who creates public art, sculptures, installations and photography. Olivier alters familiar objects, spaces, and locations, often reinterpreting the role of monuments. Her work intersects histories and memories with present-day narratives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simin Keramati</span> Iranian-born Canadian artist and filmmaker (b. 1970)

Simin Keramati is an Iranian-born Canadian multidisciplinary visual artist and activist. She is primarily known as a painter, video artist, installation artist, and filmmaker. Keramati lives in Toronto.

References

  1. ↑ Biro, Matthew; Kuspit, Donald; Corso, John J.; Potts, Alex; Apel, Dora (4 April 2015). "Art and Protest". The Brooklyn Rail. Archived from the original on 2017-11-02. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
  2. 1 2 Pasori, Cedar (26 August 2016). "This Artist Is Giving Voice To The Plight Of Iranian Women". The FADER. Archived from the original on 2017-12-29. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
  3. ↑ "Sheida Soleimani | deCordova". decordova.org. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
  4. ↑ "American-Iranian Artist Sheida Soleimani's Art Activism". Harper's BAZAAR Arabia. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
  5. ↑ "Interview with Sheida Soleimani". deformal.com. DE:FORMAL. 22 August 2018. Archived from the original on 2018-09-27. Retrieved 2018-09-24.
  6. 1 2 "Candid Magazine Interviews the American Artist Sheida Soleimani". Candid. 2019-10-19. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
  7. 1 2 3 Bess, Gabby (2016-01-22). "The Artist Making Dolls of the Women Executed in Iran". Vice. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
  8. ↑ "SHEIDA SOLEIMANI (Cranston, RI)". cpw.org. Center for Photography at Woodstock. Archived from the original on 2018-09-27. Retrieved 2018-09-24.
  9. ↑ "Sheida Soleimani: YANKEE GO HOME". The Visualist. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
  10. 1 2 "Sheida Soleimani". Atlanta Contemporary. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
  11. ↑ "9 Art Events to Attend in New York City This Week". ARTnews.com. 2018-06-04. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
  12. ↑ "Sheida Soleimani "Civil Liberties" at Boyfriends". Chicago Artist Writers. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
  13. ↑ Mclaughlin, Rosanna. "Sheida Soleimani: 'Does someone really want to buy an image of an executed woman and hang it in their home?', Studio International". Archived from the original on 2017-11-05. Retrieved 2017-12-29.
  14. ↑ Morris, Matt. "Sheida Soleimani at BOYFRIENDS".
  15. ↑ "Confronting photos capture women the Iranian government tried to make disappear". 19 April 2016. Archived from the original on 2017-08-13. Retrieved 2017-12-27.
  16. ↑ Rao, Mallika (29 January 2015). "These Twitter-Sourced Collages Paint A Dark Portrait Of Today's Iran". Archived from the original on 2017-09-03. Retrieved 2017-12-29– via Huff Post.
  17. ↑ "Sheida Soleimani - Interview Magazine". 24 March 2016. Archived from the original on 2017-08-13. Retrieved 2017-12-29.
  18. ↑ "Artists' Odes to Their Favorite Musicians". 14 October 2016. Archived from the original on 2018-09-27. Retrieved 2017-12-29.
  19. ↑ "SHEIDA SOLEIMANI:Medium of Exchange". brooklynrail.org. The Brooklyn Rail. 5 June 2018. Archived from the original on 2018-09-26. Retrieved 2018-09-24.
  20. ↑ "Sheida Soleimani: Medium of Exchange". contemporaryartscenter.org. Contemporary Arts Center. Archived from the original on 2018-09-26. Retrieved 2018-09-24.
  21. ↑ Ruben, Jolie; Webster, Amanda; Brooks, Raillan (27 April 2021). "Making Your Own Fun". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 July 2021.
  22. 1 2 Heinrich, Will (2022-12-08). "With 'Eyes on Iran,' Artists Bring Protests to Roosevelt Island". The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-10-06.
  23. ↑ "Sheida Soleimani - Brandeis University". www.brandeis.edu. Archived from the original on 2017-11-07. Retrieved 2018-09-20.
  24. ↑ "An Artist Considers the Absurdity of Ending the Iran Nuclear Deal". Hyperallergic. 2018-05-21. Retrieved 2020-01-12. But according to Soleimani, who spoke over the phone with Hyperallergic while in transit to Providence, where she lives and teaches at Rhode Island School of Design
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.