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Sheida Soleimani
Behind the Door

In Behind the Door Soleimani has collaged a photograph of the door of her mother’s house into a scene representing home and flight from home; the combat boots evince the boots of the soldiers that came to arrest her father, the birds are rehabilitated migratory birds symbolising, perhaps, the rehabilitated lives of her parents, the snakes represent danger and betrayal as well as the snakes that inhabited the cellar where her father hid from arrest, while the plant growing out of the boots suggests the prospect of renewal. The chequered paper alludes to the traditional Persian board game Snakes and Ladders. The boots are not collaged but actual objects photographed within the constructed scene, as are the taxidermied snakes. The image that Soleimani conjures is the exile’s yearning for home interrupted by the reality of the dangers it represents. The photograph plays with concepts of time and illusion, of space, safety and exoticism. The frame is stamped with a replica of the stamp in her father’s passport that gave him temporary admission into the USA. This photograph and others in the exhibition represent a working through of inherited trauma as well as an effort at human rehabilitation.

Soleimani is a second-generation refugee from Iran. Her parents were political dissidents and pro-democracy activists forced to leave the country for fears of their safety after the deposition of the Shah. Her work, which comprises sculpture, performance, film and photography, normally explores intersections of art and activism and comments on the power dynamics between the Middle East and the West and particularly human rights issues. Soleimani is also a federally licensed migratory bird rehabilitator, a practice she inherited from her mother who, a trained nurse in Iran, was not allowed to practice as one in the USA, so became a nurse to birds. Soleimani’s work is varied and explores multiple media often combining them in one work. In light of the political situation in both the Middle East and the US her work is strongly relevant to the present