ARTISTS

Sheida Soleimani

Guest Curatorial Program (2024)

Home/Land

Sheida Soleimani’s work explores intersections of art and activism, melding sculpture, performance,
film and photography to highlight critical perspectives on events across the Middle East, unpicking
the complex power dynamics between the region and western nations. Soleimani’s work interrogates
the dissemination of information in digital contexts, adapting found images from press and social
media leaks to exist within alternative scenarios. Her photographs document constructed sets within
her studio, in which repeating images carve out trompe l’oeil perspectives in a visual metaphorforthe
competing political narratives relayed by her source materials.

Home/Land, an exhibition curated by Zoraida Lopez-Diago, Baxter St’s 2024 Guest Curatorial
Initiative Recipient. Featuring works of photographers Samantha Box and Sheida Soleimani,
Home/Land explore themes of belonging, displacement, family, and the personal and geopolitical
histories that shape theirlives.

The landscapes, wildlife, flora, and fauna depicted by Box and Soleimani become spaces for
reimagining and inserting overlooked narratives into both the art world, and wider discourse. Food, in
particular, emerges as a powerful symbol of both cultural identity and the commodification of people
and the products they grow and harvest. As stewards of theirrespective legacies, Box and Soleimani
keep nature and its sustenance as metaphors for growth, healing, and the preservation of place.
Samantha Box draws on her Caribbean heritage in her series Caribbean Dreams.

Her evocative still-lifes incorporate familial objects, food, plant life, while visually narrating stories rooted in her
ancestral homeland. For Soleimani, wildlife rehabilitation serves as a metaphorfor healing and care,
employing the symbolism of birds to explore activism, and protest, while illuminating the shared
trauma of families affected by conflict and war. Through their unique perspectives, these artists serve
as talismans, weaving together complex narratives of migration and legacy, with the natural world
acting as a site forregeneration and a keeper of memory. The exhibition invites viewers to reflect on
these narratives and the intricate relationships between nature, identity, and the histories we both
inherit and inhabit.

Support for Baxter St’s Guest Curatorial Program is generously provided by the Phillip and Edith
Leonian Foundation.