Shiva Ahmadi (born 1975) is an Iranian-born American artist, known for her paintings, videos, and installations. Her work has been exhibited at galleries and museums in North America and the Middle East.

Biography

Ahmadi was born in

Tehran, Iran Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most pop ...

in 1975. Her upbringing, which is reflected in her art, was marked by 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 the

Iran–Iraq War The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between Iran and Ba'athist Iraq, Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. It began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for almost eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations S ...

. She obtained a bachelor of fine art from Azad University in 1998 and right after moved to USA to pursue her graduate studies. She attended Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan and received an Master of Art Degree in Drawing (2000) and a Master of Fine Arts in Drawing (2003). In 2003 she attended an artist residency at the

Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture is an artists residency located in Madison, Maine, just outside of Skowhegan. Every year, the program accepts online applications from emerging artists from November through January, and selects 65 ...

. In 2005 Ahmadi obtained her second MFA, in painting from

Cranbrook Academy of Art The Cranbrook Educational Community is an education, research, and public museum complex in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. This National Historic Landmark was founded in the early 20th century by newspaper mogul George Gough Booth. It consists of C ...

. Ahmadi was appointed as an Associate Professor of Art at the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The inst ...

in 2015.

Career

Ahmadi's practice borrows from the artistic traditions of Iran and the Middle East to critically examine contemporary political tensions. Incorporating cultural symbols Ahmadi has taken a critical look at current social and political issues. Ahmadi works across a variety of media, including watercolor painting, sculpture, and video animation; consistent through her pieces are the ornate patterns and vibrant colors drawn from Persian, Indian and Middle Eastern art. In her carefully illustrated worlds, formal beauty complicates global legacies of violence and oppression. These playful fantasy realms are upon closer inspection macabre theaters of politics and war: watercolor paint bloodies the canvas, and sinister global machinations play out in abstracted landscapes populated by faceless figures and dominated by oil refineries and labyrinthine pipelines. Known for her achievements in painting, her later career has been marked by the use of video-animation. Her first animation Lotus was exhibited extensively in US and around the world and gained recognition from many critics and curators. Her latest animation titled ''Ascend'' (2017) was inspired by the death of Aylan Kurdi and Syrian refugee crisis in 2015. It was acquired by the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Ahmadi's work is included in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Asia Society Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the DePaul Art Museum, the Morgan Library & Museum, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the TDIC Corporate Collection in the United Arab Emirates, and the Farjam Collection in Dubai. Her piece ''Pipes,'' a five-feet wide watercolor'','' was acquired by the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

in 2014. In 2016 she was awarded the Anonymous Was A Woman award. In 2018 Ahmadi was awarded a fellowship at the Civitella Ranieri Art Residency in Umbria, Italy.

Exhibitions

*2018– B''urning Song'', Haines Gallery, San Francisco *2018– ''This Land Is Whose Land?,'' Sun Valley Center For the Arts, Idaho *2018– ''Catastrophe and the Power of Art'',

Mori Art Museum The is a contemporary art museum founded by the real estate developer Minoru Mori (1934–2012) in the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower in the Roppongi Hills complex both of which he built in Tokyo, Japan. The exterior architect of the museum's ga ...

, Tokyo, Japan *2017– ''Ascend'', Leila Heller Gallery, New York, NY *2017 – ''Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians'' –

Aga Khan Museum The Aga Khan Museum (french: Musée Aga Khan) is a museum of Islamic art, Iranian (Persian) art and Muslim culture located at 77 Wynford Drive in the North York district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The museum is dedicated to Islamic art and ob ...

, Toronto, Ontario *2016 – ''Global/Local 1960–2015: Six Artists from Iran'' –

Grey Art Gallery The Grey Art Gallery is New York University’s fine art museum, located on historic Washington Square Park, in New York City's Greenwich Village. As a university art museum, the Grey Art Gallery functions to collect, preserve, study, document, in ...

, New York, City *2016 – ''Homeland Security'', For-Site Foundation, San Francisco *2016 – ''Spheres of Suspension'', Charles B. Wang Center, New York, NY *2014 – ''Shiva Ahmadi: In Focus'' – Asia Society, New York City *2014 – ''Artist in Exile: Creativity, Activism, and the Diasporic Experience,'' Geoffrey Yeh Art Gallery, New York, NY *2013 – ''Apocalyptic Playland'' – Leila Heller Gallery, New York City *2012 – ''The Fertile Crescent'', Rutgers University Museum Exhibition, Newark, NJ *2011 – ''Art X Detroit'', Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, MI *2010 – ''Shiva Ahmadi: Reinventing the Poetics of Myth'' – Leila Heller Gallery, New York City *2008-- ''Ahmadi and Zhang: Looking Back'', Feldman Gallery, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, OR. *2005 -- ''Oil Crisis'', Leila Heller Gallery, New York, NY

Awards

*2016 –

Anonymous Was A Woman Award The Anonymous Was A Woman Award is a grant program for women artists who are over 40 years of age, in part to counter sexism in the art world. It began in 1996 in direct response to the National Endowment for the Arts' decision to stop funding in ...

*2009 – Kresge Artist Fellowship,

Kresge Foundation The Kresge Foundation is a philanthropic private foundation headquartered in Troy, Michigan, United States. The foundation works to expand opportunities in America's cities through grantmaking and investing in arts and culture, education, envir ...

*2003 – First Prize
Michigan Fine Arts Competition
*2001 – Thomas C. Rumble University Graduate Fellowship,

Wayne State University Wayne State University (WSU) is a public research university in Detroit, Michigan. It is Michigan's third-largest university. Founded in 1868, Wayne State consists of 13 schools and colleges offering approximately 350 programs to nearly 25,000 ...

References

External links