SHEIDA SOLEIMANI

Flyways

Flyways is a series of photographs centered around two modes of labor that are urgently needed in a world marked by the direct and indirect destruction of human and non-human life. In this work—the first to explicitly connect the artist’s research and practice to her role as a federally licensed wildlife rehabilitator—Sheida Soleimani creates symbolic flight paths, linking the devastation of life to the potential for more just, multi-species futures. As both a wildlife rehabilitator and the daughter of Iranian political refugees who were hunted, imprisoned, and tortured for their activism, Soleimani has spent her life learning how infrastructures wound and kill in distinct ways. These tableaux photographs weave together two narratives through source imagery, charged objects, and powerful symbols: the stories of incarcerated individuals involved in the ongoing Women, Life, Freedom movement in Iran and the experiences of injured migratory birds under Soleimani’s care. The artist conducted extensive research to uncover the personal stories of incarcerated individuals in Iran, including that of her own mother. To smuggle these narratives out of the country—stories often buried by the Iranian regime—she worked covertly, communicating with citizens to ensure their safety. At the same time, to protect these individual’s identities, Soleimani replaces their faces with the images of the birds in her care. By doing so, she gives these narratives “flyways” to cross political borders and media channels.

Sheida Soleimani (b. 1990) is an Iranian-American artist, educator, and activist based in Providence, Rhode Island. The daughter of political refugees who escaped Iran in the early 1980s, she makes work that excavates the histories of violence linking Iran, the United States, and the Greater Middle East. In working across form and medium—especially photography, sculpture, collage, and film—she often appropriates source images from popular/digital media and resituates them within defamiliarizing tableaux.