Exhibition Details
Known for her intricate, studio-based compositions that combine photographs, props, live animals and even her own parents in surreal, magical realist scenes, Sheida Soleimani expands her practice in Panjereh with the debut of a new body of work featuring injured birds. These images draw from her work as a wildlife rehabilitator and founder of Congress of the Birds, a federally licensed wild bird rehabilitation center in Rhode Island.
Curated by Elisabeth Sherman, Guest Curator, the exhibition will bring together more than forty photographs, the vast majority of which have never before been shown in New York.
Curated by Elisabeth Sherman, Guest Curator, the exhibition will bring together more than forty photographs, the vast majority of which have never before been shown in New York.
About the Ghostwriter Series
The Ghostwriter series takes Soleimani’s family history—specifically that of her parents' flight from Iran as political refugees following the 1979 revolution—as an overarching conceptual framework that informs her creative process, from the significance of the objects and family ephemera she uses to the compositions of the photographs themselves.
The series carries out a form of ‘ghostwriting’ in the way it both narrates and reconstructs the lives of Soleimani’s parents without utilizing their voices directly. The works focus on their lives in Iran as pro-democracy activists before then being forced to flee the country, enduring both physical and psychological hardship on their way to eventual resettlement in the United States. Soleimani’s mother was forced to give up being a practicing nurse, leading her to begin caring for wild birds, a skill which she would eventually pass along to her daughter.
The series carries out a form of ‘ghostwriting’ in the way it both narrates and reconstructs the lives of Soleimani’s parents without utilizing their voices directly. The works focus on their lives in Iran as pro-democracy activists before then being forced to flee the country, enduring both physical and psychological hardship on their way to eventual resettlement in the United States. Soleimani’s mother was forced to give up being a practicing nurse, leading her to begin caring for wild birds, a skill which she would eventually pass along to her daughter.
Location
International Center of Photography
79 Essex Street
New York, NY 10002
Image: Blind Owl, 2024 © Sheida Soleimani, courtesy of International Center of Photography