Gita Hashemi (

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

: گیتا هاشمی, born 1961) is an Iranian-born artist, writer and curator residing in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

, Canada. Her work juxtaposes history and the present, political and personal, and local and global. It draws on language as both visual and narrative element, and includes installation, video, and performance art, with collaborative, participatory and interactive strategies.

Biography

Hashemi was born in

Shiraz Shiraz (; fa, شیراز, Širâz ) is the fifth-most-populous city of Iran and the capital of Fars Province, which has been historically known as Pars () and Persis. As of the 2016 national census, the population of the city was 1,565,572 p ...

. Due to her vocal political stance, Hashemi was expelled from the College of Fine Arts at the University of Iran. In 1984, she was forced to leave

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

. She is known for her maxim, "The personal is poetic, the poetic is political, the political is personal." As an artist, she is less interested in working in the artistic mainstream and more interested in using art for activism.

Career

She is the first Iranian artist to perform calligraphy as a live art, which she refers to as embodied writing. She was an early practitioner of

Net art upright=1.3, "Simple Net Art Diagram", a 1997 work by Michael Sarff and Tim Whidden Internet art (also known as net art) is a form of new media art distributed via the Internet. This form of art circumvents the traditional dominance of the phys ...

and

Digital art Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process, or more specifically computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960s, various name ...

(early-1990s to mid-2000s). Her narrative

CD-R CD-R (Compact disc-recordable) is a digital optical disc storage format. A CD-R disc is a compact disc that can be written once and read arbitrarily many times. CD-R discs (CD-Rs) are readable by most CD readers manufactured prior to the i ...

''Of Shifting Shadows: Revisiting the 1979 Iranian Revolution through an Exilic Journey in History and Memory'' (2000) is a comprehensive artistic account of the

Iranian Revolution The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dyna ...

and has been exhibited widely. '' Leonardo'' wrote that ''Of Shifting Shadows'' causes the viewer to "move like nomads around this place of images and sounds, locating the place where we can arrive at an understanding of the depth of these experiences." In 2013, she showed an exhibit called ''The Idea of Freedom'' at the Montréal Arts Interculturels (MAI). The Hemispheric Institute wrote that ''The Idea of Freedom'' looks at the events in Iranian history and then "channels them into insights that are as personal as they are political." In 2017, she was the first artist to use the Open Space Lab at

Carleton University Carleton University is an English-language public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1942 as Carleton College, the institution originally operated as a private, non-denominational evening college to serve returning Wo ...

where she created large-scale

calligraphy based on the memoirs of a friend. She has won the Ontario Association of Art Galleries' 2017 Monographic Exhibition of the Year for the monumental interdisciplinary performance ''Grounding'', and the Baddeck International New Media Festival award for disk-based work for ''Of Shifting Shadows.'' Her work has been shown at the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum and at the (Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Yucatan).

Publications

* ''Like Flesh and Blood'' * ''Afghanistan, 2002: No Refuge'' * ''The Idea of Freedom by Gita Hashemi''

References

External links

Gita Hashemi's biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hashemi, Gita 1961 births Living people Artists from Toronto Canadian performance artists Women performance artists 20th-century Canadian women artists 21st-century Canadian women artists Iranian emigrants to Canada 20th-century Iranian women artists 21st-century Iranian women artists Iranian women writers Iranian writers Writers from Toronto