Sheida Soleimani

Sheida Soleimani (b. 1990) lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island. 

Sheida Soleimani is an Iranian-American artist, educator and activist. The daughter of political refugees who escaped Iran in the early 1980s, Soleimani makes work that excavates the histories of violence linking Iran, the United States and the Greater SWANA Region. 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, how can one do justice to survivor testimony and to the survivors themselves (To Oblivion)? What are the connections between oil, corruption and human rights abuses among OPEC nations (Medium of Exchange)? How do nations work out reparations deals that often turn the ethics of historical injustice into playing fields for their own economic interests (Reparations Packages)? How may the layering of memory and familial history both report fact and produce a reckoning with the intimate resonances of a geopolitics of violence (Ghostwriter)? In contrast to Western news, which rarely covers these problems, Soleimani makes work that persuades spectators to address them directly and effectively.

Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in institutions such as the International Center for Photography - ICP (New York, US), the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (US), Photoforum Pasquart (Biel, CH), Providence College Galleries (US), Castello San Basilio (Basilicata, IT), Southern Utah Museum of Art (Cedar City, US), CUE Art Foundation (New York, US), Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati, US), Atlanta Contemporary (US), and MoMA PS1 (New York, US), to name a few. Soleimani has participated in group exhibitions in institutions such as the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University (Waltham, US), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts - PAFA (Philadelphia, US), the deCordova New England Biennial (Lincoln, US), the South London Gallery (UK), The Living Art Museum (Reykjavik, IS), and many others.

Soleimani’s work is held in permanent collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, US), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (US), the Victoria & Albert Museum (London, UK), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts - PAFA (Philadelphia, US), MIT List Visual Arts Center (Cambridge, US), and KADIST (Paris, FR). Her work has been recognized internationally in both exhibitions and publications such as Artforum, The New York Times, Financial Times, Art in America, Interview Magazine, and many others. Alongside her artistic practice, Soleimani is also an Associate Professor of Studio Art at Brandeis University and a federally licensed wildlife rehabilitator.