Sheida Soleimani's contribution to Eyes on Iran was talked about in Vogue.
"At times hot political content combines with an art that is slow to digest, confounding expectations. That’s the case with Sheida Soleimani’s Mahsa (2022), a mysterious photograph which greets visitors at the park’s entrance. It takes a while to puzzle out the image’s elements: incongruously pink brain scans, a hand thrust forward, a burning cloth. In fact, the brain scans are copies of those leaked by hospital personnel in Teheran to disprove the government’s claim that Mahsa Amini died of natural causes while in police custody. They reveal the traces of blunt force to the young woman’s head, while the hand in the photograph holds a burning hijab.
“I made that work in the week following Mahsa Amini’s death,” Soleimani, the daughter of Iranian immigrants who were political prisoners, says by phone from her home and studio (where she also runs a wildlife rehabilitation center) in Providence, R.I. “In my work, I am pushing back against the consumption of fast information,” she explains. “I believe that people need to take time to understand things that are difficult.”
Read the full article here.
