Shiva Ahmadi, Limited Edition Artwork based on artist’s rug design for Sanctuary, FOR-SITE Foundation, 2017.
Shiva Ahmadi’s contribution to Sanctuary features a Buddha-like character seated on a lotus throne. But unlike traditional depictions of the spiritual leader, her figure is defaced, bloodied, and perched precariously on a tangle of briars. Instead of Buddha, the enlightened teacher, the artist presents a mere mortal struggling to balance the weaponry of warfare, which could teeter out of hand at any moment. Ahmadi continually probes the confluence of Eastern and Western cultures, and the notion of unpredictable threats that often hide in plain sight. She asks viewers to look beyond the surface and consider the implications of our choices and actions, and she reminds us of the fine line that separates peace and destruction.
Shiva Ahmadi’s practice borrows from the artistic traditions of Iran and the Middle East to critically examine global political tensions and social concerns. Having come of age in the tumultuous years following the Iranian Revolution and subsequent Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, Ahmadi moved to the United States in 1998, and has been based in California since 2015. Ahmadi studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Wayne State University, Detroit, MI; and Azad University, Tehran, Iran. In 2016, Ahmadi was awarded the ‘Anonymous Was A Woman’ Award and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Shiva Ahmadi, a new monograph of her work, was published by Skira in Spring 2017. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art at University of California Davis.
Sanctuary was on view at Fort Mason Chapel, San Francisco, from October 7, 2017 through March 11, 2018.
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FOR-SITE Foundation is pleased to announce a curated selection of limited edition artworks commissioned from FOR-SITE artists over the years. These works were commissioned to commemorate the artists’ contributions to exhibitions International Orange (2012), Home Land Security (2016), and Sanctuary (2017-18). We are also thrilled to include a newly-commissioned edition by photographer Alexia Webster which is a part of her Street Studios Project series.
Visit FOR-SITE’s online shop to view these works and other items and keep an eye on our Field Notes blog for special features on select works. Please email katie@for-site.org with sales inquiries or questions.
