Shiva Ahmadi was born in 1975 in Tehran, Iran. She lived through the Iranian Revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty in 1979, and then the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to August 1988. She received a BA in 1999 from Azad University, founded on May 21, 1982. She moved to the United States to attend graduate school, and she received an MFA in drawing (2003) from Wayne State University in Detroit. She completed a residency in painting and sculpture at the Skowhegan School in Maine, and she received a second MFA in 2005 from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan.
When the United States bombed Iran in 1999, the same year she came to America, Amadi’s traumatic childhood memories flooded back. The style and themes of her art took a new direction. The traditional art of Iran, the Persian miniature, had seemed to Ahmadi “kitsch and ugly and old.” But she turned to them: “I became an obsessed student. I like to make the surface look very colorful and vibrant. I used it as a tool to deceive and get people to pay attention to the story hidden in there.”
“Untitled #6” (2012) (10”x8”) (watercolor) is from the series Thrones for Sale. The chaos of war, regime changes that inevitably became corrupt, and the situation in her homeland and the world at large, have become major influences on her work. “In Iran we have a Supreme Leader. His decisions affect people’s lives directly. He is a king, a monarch, a dictator. His minions, even though they know he is wrong, still support him.” In “Untitled #6” a male figure is seated in the Buddhist lotus position, ironically the pose of meditation. He wears a black and white checked keffiyeh. Abadi combines the Persian tradition of the turban with the Islamic scarf tradition. The keffiyeh was for protection from sunburn, dust, and sand. In the 20th Century, it has become a symbol for support of the Islamic Republic and its ideas.
The flaming golden halo is a traditional image representing Mohammad in Persian manuscripts. However, Abadi’s halo contains the red flames of a destructive fire. The faces of her figures are always covered in blood. The male figure holds a bomb in his right hand. The throne is painted in gold and decorated with patterns from ancient Persian manuscripts. The throne is a wall with protective spikes. The throne appears to float in space on an enormous lotus blossom. The lotus flower is a significant symbol in several Eastern religions. Lotus flowers grow in mucky water, but they emerge unblemished and beautiful. The flowers close at night, receding into the muddy water, and they return as the sun rises. They are symbols of rebirth, resilience, and strength. Abadi’s painting presents the contradiction and tension of the modern world.
A closer look at the image also reveals an irregular pattern in the cream-colored background. Abadi creates additional tension by sprinkling hair, rice, and salt granules randomly on the page before painting the color. She often employs this technique.
The Iranian economy depends on oil sales. The oppressive Iranian political regime controls everything. “Oil Barrel No. 5” (2009) (34.5’’ tall) (oil paint on steel) is one of a series of recycled steel oil barrels she painted with elaborate Persian miniature elements, including gold leafy vines and red and white flowers. Gold shields have large ragged holes torn in them from which blood, not oil, flows. Ahmadi paints animals from Persian miniatures, but they are abstracted and distorted. The white-horned figure at the right has the feet of a prancing horse, a blood-red mask for a face, and an abstract figurative element behind it. At the left, a headless brown horse, seen from the rear, charges into a headless yellow and gold striped animal. Its coloring suggests it is a leopard, but its shape resembles a horse. White lines, representing ropes, circle the figures. White arrows or spears fly in various directions. Chaos and danger are suggested within the brilliantly colored scene. Ahmadi’s oil barrels are in museums and private collections around the world.
Ahmadi also has decorated pressure cookers, inspired by terrorists’ use of pressure cooker bombs beginning in 2010. She saw the irony of a domestic item used to feed people being used to murder them. She commented that her images from Persian and Indian miniatures were “illustrating heroic stories from Islamic mythology and the Koran. Beauty and chaos, good and evil–it is all here. Our world is a bundle of contradictions.” She ordered the pressure cookers from Amazon.
“Pipes” (2013) (41”x61’’) (watercolor) (Metropolitan Museum) contains many of Ahmadi’s artistic elements. Her choice of watercolor as a medium is more apparent in this larger work: “You can’t erase anything or paint over the water…water runs and is out of control. It is transparent, temperamental, and honest…If I make a mistake, I can’t do anything about it, which makes it scary but at the same time exciting. I don’t think there is any other medium that shows instability better than water.” Flowing from the green carpet is a large puddle of red paint, or is it blood?
The painting has her characteristic mottled beige background. A ruler sits on a Persian carpet under an elaborate Persian canopy. Minions pay homage to the leader. However, the minions have either monkey faces or faces covered in blood. All the figures hold grenades or bombs. The “Pipes” represent an oil refinery that floats in the air. Birds, arrows, spears, and ropes are scattered throughout the painting. On top of the canopy, a horse’s legs are impossibly conjoined. At the lower left, one four-legged animal appears to be nursing or biting a second animal. Both of their heads are covered with blood. Ahmadi explains her painting: “They are about the chaos and the instability in the world right now, whether it is in the Middle East or elsewhere.”
“Untitled 5” (2014) (30”x22’’) (graphite and ink on paper) is from a series of drawings. The angels are common figures in Persian miniatures. She
describes the series: “Whoever gets into power, they get the bomb in their hands and just play around with it, with no regard for people’s lives.”
The “Strait of Hormuz” (2018) (40”x60’’) (watercolor) is a reference to one of the most important strategic pathways for international trade. It is 90 nautical miles long and varies in width from 21 to 52 nautical miles. Twenty-one million barrels of oil, over $1 billion, were shipped through the Strait every day. Iran has threatened over the years to close the Strait. To protest America’s proposed sanctions, Iran, for the first time, tested a missile in August 2018.
The sapphire blue of the Strait flows down the center of the composition. Chaotic images are placed on either side. At the top left, a monkey man fiddles with the tanks and tubes of a nuclear or oil plant. At the bottom left, is a grouping of abstract wheels, blood, and a monkey man desperately holding onto a rope. More wheels, ropes, monkeys, blood, and a toppled horse are tangled under a canopy at the upper right. In the middle of the Strait, a prancing horse with bones for a head carries a golden goblet full of richly colored abstract patterns. At the lower right, two monkey-men figures walk away triumphantly lifting abstract trophies into the air. Interpretation of Ahmadi’s work is ultimately left up to the viewer. She stated in a 2020 interview, “One of the books I read during this time [her childhood] was the Farsi version of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. What I loved most was the allegory and how the message was hidden and wrapped in layers and conveyed through animals.”
Ahmadi became an Associate Professor of Art at the University of California at Davis in 2015, and she now lives in the Bay Area. She was one of ten women awarded the prestigious Anonymous Was A Woman award in 2016. The award included a $25,000 grant. Her works also include animated videos and ceramics. She said, “Ceramic is clay, and clay is the land. And the land is what I am worried about all the time.”
A recent theme in Ahmadi’s work was inspired by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs Wade in June 2022, and the arrest, beating, and death of Mahsa Amini (September 16, 2022) in Iran for not wearing the proper Islamic hajib, required for all females from age six. During the pandemic, she made rapid watercolor drawings. She said, “Then I realized, ‘Oh look, they’re all women. It was unconscious. They’re scarred, missing arms and legs. But they’re still standing and strong.”
Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring to Chestertown with her husband Kurt in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and the Institute of Adult Learning. An artist, she sometimes exhibits work at River Arts. She also paints sets for the Garfield Theater in Chestertown.
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