Shiva Ahmadi was born in Tehran, Iran in 1975. Her paintings explore the powerful intersection of religion and politics, examining the corrupt and cancerous link between East and West. 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 canvas. Ahmadi works across a variety of two-dimensional and three-dimensional media, including drums, paper and Aquaboard. Consistent throughout her pieces are ornate patterns, rendered in vibrant golds and reds and influenced by Persian, Indian and Turkish traditions. She both celebrates and commemorates the raw beauty and turmoil of these cultures’ histories. Ahmadi currently lives in works in Detroit, Michigan. She received her BFA from Azad University, Tehran, in 1998; her MA and MFA in Drawing from Wayne State University in 2000 and 2003, respectively; and her MFA in Painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2005. Her solo exhibitions include Oil Crisis (2005), Reinventing the Poetics of Myth (2010), and Apocalyptic Playland (2013) at Leila Heller Gallery, and solo shows at Art Dubai in 2010 and 2012. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Chicago’s DePaul Art Museum, and The Farjam Collection in Dubai
