Ascend
Artist
Shiva Ahmadi
(Iranian, b. 1975)
Place of OriginBerkeley, CA, United States
Date2017
MaterialsSingle-channel video animation with sound
DimensionsDuration: 6:48 min.
Credit LineMuseum purchase, Mortimer-Harvey Fund
Object number2017.36
DepartmentWest Asian Art
ClassificationsMultimedia
On View
Not on viewCurrent events, power, kingship, and lyrical, storybook-like imagery intersect in Shiva Ahmadi’s work Ascend. The artist depicts a curious and complex series of scenes that feature rustling leaves, faceless monkeys, and a bubbling pool. Her animated watercolor painting morphs with a droning soundscape as the actions transition.
The video eventually arrives at a scene where an angel flies above the body of a small boy floating face down. The haunting image is pulled from a September 2015 news story about Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old boy whose name in Arabic means “to ascend.” Alan drowned while he and his family were fleeing Syria, and his body washed up on a beach in Turkey. The sobering reality of this contemporary image is situated within Ahmadi’s established artistic vocabulary, which draws from Persian painting traditions and her own experiences with the effects of war, chaos, and violence instigated by political and religious leadership.
Shiva Ahmadi was born in Tehran and received her BFA from Azad University before moving to the US and receiving her MFA degrees in painting and drawing from the Cranbrook Academy and Wayne State University in Michigan. She currently lives and works in the Bay Area and is a faculty member at the University of California at Davis.
The video eventually arrives at a scene where an angel flies above the body of a small boy floating face down. The haunting image is pulled from a September 2015 news story about Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old boy whose name in Arabic means “to ascend.” Alan drowned while he and his family were fleeing Syria, and his body washed up on a beach in Turkey. The sobering reality of this contemporary image is situated within Ahmadi’s established artistic vocabulary, which draws from Persian painting traditions and her own experiences with the effects of war, chaos, and violence instigated by political and religious leadership.
Shiva Ahmadi was born in Tehran and received her BFA from Azad University before moving to the US and receiving her MFA degrees in painting and drawing from the Cranbrook Academy and Wayne State University in Michigan. She currently lives and works in the Bay Area and is a faculty member at the University of California at Davis.
