Shiva Ahmadi

Posted by Fabio 20 May 2014

Shiva Ahmadi was born in Tehran Iran in 1975. Her paintings explore the realms of religion and politics, and the powers associated around them. Her archetypal repertoire is full of elegance and folly, a search for reasons why corruption is the cancerous link between East and West. War, nuclear power, petrol, and various societal pressures to maintain it all are the toxins by which she establishes her aesthetic metaphors. She creates fantastical realms suggestive of her own experiences of the destruction and chaos wrought by war. Her faceless abstract figures inhabit war-ridden territory, and her watercolor paint bloodies the board.

Ahmadi’s metaphors manifest, for example, enthroned rulers imposing themselves over dependent servants, the despondent community members and animals trapped within in a power struggle, everyone interdependent yet living in complete mayhem. Utilizing strong golds and reds with ornate patterns, these stylistic complexities are influenced by Persian, Indian and Turkish traditions. Her work is ultimately expressive of the turmoil laying beneath social order, whether it be tyranny or democracy, and its extended consequences across all borders. She paints both on two and three dimensional surfaces, such as on oil barrels, paper, and aqua board.

www.shivaahmadi.com