Shiva Ahmadi: Crown of Flames

Haines Gallery proudly presents Crown of Flames, our second solo exhibition with Iranian-American multimedia artist Shiva Ahmadi (b. 1975, Tehran, Iran; lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area). Conceived before the current Middle Eastern conflict, Crown of Flames features new and recent works that continue Ahmadi's longterm exploration of conflict, corruption, and instability, informed by her own experiences and the current news cycle. The works on view unfold as both personal testimony and global allegory, at once dazzling and devastating. Across painting, sculpture, and video, Ahmadi fuses formal beauty with an undercurrent of violence, drawing uneasy parallels between her brightly painted scenes and global issues of war, resource extraction, and the rise of authoritarian regimes — in the United States, Iran, Venezuela, and beyond.