Marooned
The Society for Asian Art cordially invites you
to join us for an online
Upper Category member event.
Marooned with Shiva Ahmadi
Thursday, October 28, 2021, 2:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. Pacific Time
Zoom Webinar
Fee: $15 per person Society Upper Category members only. Advance registration must be received by the SAA by October 21, 2021.
Inspired by classical Persian and Indian miniature paintings, Marooned animation explores the destabilizing effect of politics and war on ordinary people, including the plight of immigrants and refugees. In this work, a group of people are working fastidiously to excavate large rocks from the ground and haul them over a hill, using them to construct a pathway towards a marooned oil tanker in the ocean nearby. The animation begins with the individual efforts of these creatures as they work towards their goal with extreme care and perseverance. Suddenly, menacing ghouls appear in greater and greater numbers. Just as the painstakingly crafted pathway is nearing completion, the ghouls maliciously circumvent the creatures who constructed the bridge and reach the oil tanker before them, swiftly steering it beyond the frame.
Shiva Ahmadi works across 2D and 3D media, including watercolor painting, sculpture, and video animation.
Her practice utilizes the ornate and vibrant artistic traditions of Iran, India 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.
Ahmadi’s latest video animation, Marooned, will be included in the exhibition, From Moment to Movement: Picturing Protest in the Kramlich Collection, opening January 8, 2022 at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis. She also has works in two current exhibitions, Shrine Room Projects: Shiva Ahmadi / Genesis Breyer P-Orridge / Tsherin Sherpa at the Rubin Museum of Art, and Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poets: Contemporary Persians at the Asia Society Museum in New York. Ahmadi's work was also included in the recent Epic Iran exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Her animation entitled Ascend (2017), inspired by the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015, was acquired by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
Photos courtesy of Haines Gallery.
A Zoom confirmation email with information on how to join the webinar will be sent to all registered attendees a few days before the event. Even though it is not required by Zoom, we recommend that you download and install Zoom on your computer or mobile device in advance, and set yourself up with a free account. Attendees will have a chance to participate in the Q&A with a text chat function.
Advance registration for this event is now closed. Please email the SAA Office if you are interested in doing a late registration. Thank you.
Registration Policies
The Society for Asian Art's cancellation policy requires at least one week's advance written notice in order to receive a refund of registration fees. This excludes our Travel programs, which have separate cancellation policies, as well as any programs where a specific refund policy is stated on the event page. Your fees will be returned to you through a check in the mail. To cancel, please contact us.
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