Shiva Ahmadi

Shiva Ahmadi is an artist whose practice spans painting, watercolor, sculpture, installation, and animation. Drawing from historical and contemporary visual traditions of West and South Asia, her work uses beauty, color, and intricate detail to explore violence, displacement, political power, and the complexities of contemporary life. Across media, Ahmadi creates richly layered worlds in which human figures, animals, architecture, and ornamental forms become part of allegorical narratives reflecting on war, migration, cultural memory, and the abuse of power.

 

In recent years, Ahmadi has expanded her practice beyond painting and watercolor into moving image, sculpture, and installation. Her animations combine hand-painted imagery, movement, and sound, while her sculptural work transforms materials and objects associated with oil, industry, and domestic traditions to examine resource extraction, power, displacement, and cultural memory.

 

Ahmadi’s work is held in numerous public collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Morgan Library & Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Detroit Institute of Arts, Denver Art Museum, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, San José Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, among others.

 

Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at museums and institutions nationally and internationally. Ahmadi is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the Anonymous Was A Woman Award and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Her monograph, Shiva Ahmadi, was published by Skira.