Fables of Fire and Water
SHIVA AHMADI
Shiva Ahmadi - Fables of Fire and Water
Shiva Ahmadi - Fables of Fire and Water, represents a chance to view Ahmadi’s wonderful work. We are very fortunate to have Shiva Ahmadi exhibit in the University Art Gallery. Utilizing an impressive array of artistic mediums that include, animation, painting and sculptures. Ahmadi tells us different stories on a variety of global issues. Like today’s headlines, she brings to light the brutality of war, the problems with immigration and how so many of the world’s populations of marginalized peoples are put into harm’s way daily.
Video, painting and sculpture in all forms are fundamental areas of educating artists in the Art Department. Having exceptional exhibitions in all in our galleries helps to generate meaningful discussions and lifelong learning about these mediums. The University Art Gallery’s programing helps to support our faculty’s teaching. It is usually through faculty recommendations that many exhibitions come to our galleries.
I would like to thank the many colleagues that have been instrumental in presenting this exhibition. Shiva Ahmadi for the chance of exhibiting her wonderful work, Noely Ortiz, our Administrative Support Coordinator for her tireless work in organizing and arranging the show details. I would also like to thank, Brad Peatross of the School of the Arts and California State University, Stanislaus for the catalog design and Stan State Print Shop for the printing this catalog. I would also like to thank the Instructionally Related Activates Program of California State University, Stanislaus, as well as anonymous donors for the funding of the exhibition and catalogue. The support is greatly appreciated.
Dean De Cocker, Director University Art Gallery California State University, Stanislaus
Eve’s Promise, watercolor & silk screen print on paper, 60” x 80”, 2023
Eve’s Promise, detail
Introduction
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
— George Orwell, Animal Farm
In Shiva Ahmadi’s animated works, luminous washes of color pulse with vitality, drawing us in, only to confront us with scenes of fantastical horror. These nightmares are rooted in reality.
Born in Tehran and based in the United States, Ahmadi mines her own history of living through the Iranian Revolution (1979) and the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), when bombings and uncertainty shaped her childhood, but her subjects cleave closer to the present tense. Books— among them a Farsi translation of Orwell’s Animal Farm—offered the young artist refuge, and their allegorical power remains central to her work. “By making the surface beautiful,” she explains, “I want to seduce the viewer before revealing the ugly truth.”
Matters of fact are central to three video animations presented in Fables of Fire and Water. Meticulously crafted from hand-painted watercolors, Lotus (2014), Ascend (2017), and Marooned (2021) each highlight the tragedies that result when power is abused. Taking inspiration from Persian miniature painting, Lotus depicts a newly enthroned, Buddha-like figure who promises peace and benevolence, only to succumb to an inevitable descent into tyranny. Fragile bubbles morph into bombs tossed aloft by sycophantic monkeys, while blood streaks the leader’s face and the cycle of despotism repeats. Ascend memorializes the tragic death of the two-year-old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi. Kurdi drowned in 2015 with his mother and brother when their boat capsized in the Mediterranean Sea as they tried to make their way toward safety.
Heartrending photographs of the child’s body, face down on a Greek shore, brought attention to an international refugee crisis that continues today. In Ahmadi’s video, balls of fire rain down on a cramped vessel of seafaring monkeys, as winged angels carry the child’s spirit upward. Most recently, Marooned channels the anxieties of migration and exploitation that have only intensified since its making. Figures toil to build a path to a distant oil tanker, heaving stones toward the shoreline, their bodies radiant with pain. Their plans for departure are thwarted by a pack of jackal-like creatures who claim the tanker for themselves, leaving the laborers stranded—a haunting image of hope deferred by island imprisonment. Animating watercolors that are themselves unstable and uncontainable, Ahmadi captures the volatility of life under despotic rule.
Together, these three works offer a fable of our own times: initially appealing, yet shadowed by cruelty, corruption, and loss. At once dazzling and devastating, they unfold as both personal testimony and global allegory. Yet, as Ahmadi reminds us, “My work deals with abuse of power and corruption. For me it really doesn’t matter where you live—whether it is Iran, Syria, or Detroit. If the leader is not there to guide and save people, everyone will suffer.” In a current era shaped by war, displacement, and rising authoritarianism, Ahmadi’s Fables of Fire and Water takes on new urgency, reminding us that while these cycles continue, so too does the possibility of seeing clearly and refusing to look away.
David Spalding Executive Director, Haines Gallery
Umbilical, watercolor &, screen print on paper, 60” x 83”, 2023
Flame Proofed, watercolor and silkscreen print on paper, 41” x 60”, 2024 Collection of Manetti Shrem Museum
Fiery Descent, watercolor and silkscreen print on paper, 41” x 60”, 2024
Unbound, watercolor and silkscreen print on paper, 41” x 60” 2024
Magic Rope, watercolor and silkscreen print on paper, 41” x 60”, 2024
Mermaid, watercolor and silkscreen print on paper, 30” x 41.5” 2024
Daphne, watercolor on paper, 15” x 22.5”, 2024
Eden’s Keeper, watercolor on paper, 22.5” x 30” 2024
Cascade, watercolor on paper, 22.5” x 30”, 2024
Wings and Whispers, watercolor on paper, 22.5” x 30”, 2024
Felinity, watercolor on paper, 22.5” x 30”, 2024
Octopus, watercolor on paper, 15” x 22.5”, 2024
Entwinded, watercolor on paper, 15” x 22.5”, 2024
Pink Roots, watercolor on paper, 15” x 22.5”, 2024
Tangled Tales, watercolor on paper, 15” x 22.5”, 2024
Oil Barrel # 17, Oil and Swarovski crystal on steel barrel 29” x 21” x 21”, 2011
Oil Barrel # 20, Oil and Swarovski crystal on steel barrel 29” x 21” x 21”, 2011
Ascend, Single-channel video animation with sound Edition of 7, Collection of Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, 2017
Lotus, Single-channel video animation with sound, Edition of 5, Collection of Asia Society Museum, NYC 2014
Marooned, Single-channel video animation with sound (handmade animation), Edition of 3, Collection of Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 2021
Artist Statement
I work across painting, sculpture, and animation to approach my ideas from multiple perspectives. My practice centers on themes of displacement and instability drawing from both personal experiences and collective histories of trauma. I explore how politics and power shape people’s lives, often leading to war, exploitation of natural resources, forced migration, and exile. These stories are too often silenced or erased, yet they live on in the bodies and memories of those who survive.
Storytelling has always been my language. As a child in Iran, I found refuge under the kitchen table while bombs shook the ground around us. Hiding there, I invented stories, populating them with characters who were playful but strong and resourceful. That act of imagination was a form of survival. It was also the beginning of my artistic practice.
Today, my paintings, sculptures, and animations extend from that impulse—to construct narratives as a way of making sense of violence, displacement, and loss.
Each medium in my practice becomes a vessel for storytelling. In my large-scale watercolors, I paint figures and animals, layered with silkscreened fragments of news hidden in the background. In sculpture, I feminize and adorn violent or industrial objects—pressure cooker bombs, oil barrels—through ornamentation, exposing their violence while reclaiming them as poetic forms. In animation, monkeys appear as recurring figures. Playful at first, they reveal themselves as loyal followers of corrupt leaders, enacting consequences that mirror cycles of greed and control. What binds these works together is an insistence on making visible what has been suppressed—personal memory, collective trauma, and erased histories.
I collaborate with my medium. In Watercolor painting, I embrace its unpredictability—its transparency, fluidity, and raw honesty. The uncontrollable flow of the medium open space for experimentation and depth. Through video animation, I expand painting into time and movement. My painted characters, landscapes, and abstract forms come alive, shifting from static images to dynamic narratives that unfold across space and echo oral traditions of storytelling. In sculpture I keep the original form but transforming the surface.
My process is rooted in handwork and detail, which I regard as a quiet act of resistance. The labor-intensive nature of my practice—whether through thousands of hand-painted animation frames or densely layered paintings—mirrors both the slow violence of oppression and the persistence of those who endure it. Surface beauty invites the viewer in, only to gradually uncover deeper tensions beneath.
Shiva Ahmadi CV
EDUCATION
2005 Cranbrook Academy of Arts, Bloomfield Hills, MI, Master of Fine Arts, Painting
2003 Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, Master of Fine Arts, Drawing
2000 Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, Master of Art, Drawing
1998 Azad University, Tehran, Iran, Bachelor of Fine Art, Painting
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025 Fables of Fire and Water, University Art Gallery, California State University Stanislaus
2024 Strand of Resilience, Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, CA Tangle, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2023 The Courage of Eve, Gallery Rosenfeld, London, UK
Unbound, Saint Joseph’s Art Society, San Francisco, CA
2021 The Body Politic, Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2020 Labyrinths, Elain Jacob Gallery, Detroit, MI
2019 Shrine Room, Rubin Museum of Art, New York, NY
2108 Burning Song, Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2017 Ascend, Leila Heller Gallery, New York, NY
Ascend by Shiva Ahmadi, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA
2016 Spheres of Suspension, Charles B. Wang Center, New York, NY
2014 Shiva Ahmadi: In Focus, Asia Society Museum, New York, NY
Lotus, Charles B. Wang Center, Stony Brook University, New York, NY
2013 Apocalyptic Playland, Leila Heller Gallery, New York, NY
2012 Throne, College of Wooster Art Museum, Wooster, OH
Throne, Art Dubai, Leila Heller Gallery, Dubai, UAE
2010 Reinventing the Poetics of Myth, Leila Heller Gallery, New York, NY
2005 Oil Crisis, Leila Heller Gallery, New York, NY
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024 The Flow, Fridman Gallery, New York, NY
Audition, Verge Centers for the Arts, Sacramento, CA
M is for Water, Di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, CA Sweaty Armpits: We All Live In Bodies, Gallery 120710, Berkley, CA
2023 Rising Sun, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA
Being and Belonging, Ontario Museum of Art, Toronto, Canada
Eureka, Creativity in the Golden State, California Artists at the Governor’s Mansion, Sacramento, CA
2022 From Moment to Movement: Picturing Protest in the Kramlich Collection, Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, CA
The Temple Of Artemis, Analix Forever, Geneva, Switzerland
2021 Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet, Asia Society Museum, New York, NY
Inspiration From The Ancient, Gallery Rosenfeld, London, UK
Modern and Contemporary Drawings, The Morgan Library & Museum, NYC Epic Iran, Virginia Albert Museum, London, UK
A Boundless Drop in A Boundless Ocean, Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL
With Eyes Open, Cranbrook Museum of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI Unrealism, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Painting the Figure, Gallery Rosenfeld, London, UK
2020 Dreaming Together: Asia, Society Museum/New York Historical Society, NY
2019 A Bridge Between You and Everything, High Line Nine Gallery, New York, NY How the Line Gets In, Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY
Once at Present, Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco , CA
Parallel Vision, Wasserman project, Detroit, MI
2018 Catastrophe and the Power of Art, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
Revolution Generations, Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar
Long, Winding Journeys: Contemporary Art and the Islamic Tradition, Katonah Museum of Art, NY
2018
Connected, SF Photo fair, San Francisco, CA
This Land Is Whose Land? Sun Valley Center For the Arts, Idaho
2017 Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians, Agha Khan Museum, Toronto, Canada
Sanctuary, Fort Mason Chapel, San Francisco, CA
Exquisite Corpse: Moving Image in Latin American and Asian Art, Mana Contemporary, Miami, FL
2016 Homeland Security, For-site foundation, San Francisco, CA
Global/Local, Grey Art Gallery NYU, NYC
Fireflies in the Night Take Wing, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Athens, Greece
A Heritage Transposed, The Box Freiraum Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2015 Armory Show, Leila Heller Gallery, NYC
2014 Artist in Exile: Creativity, Activism, and the Diasporic Experience, Geoffrey Yeh Art Gallery, New York, NY
Art Dubai, Leila Heller Gallery, Dubai, UAE
2013 Venice Biennale, Small Works Project, Collaboration of Library Street Collective, Detroit MI and Benetton, Venice, Italy
2012 The Fertile Crescent, Rutgers University Museum Exhibition, Newark, NJ
The Rule and Its Exceptions, Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, TX
2011 Art Abu Dhabi, Leila Heller Gallery, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Jasmin: Oriental Summer, Sabine Knust Gallery, Munich, Germany
Art X Detroit, Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, MI
[Dis]Locating Culture: Contemporary Islamic Art in America, Michael Berger Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA
Art Dubai, Leila Heller Gallery, Dubai, UAE
VIP Art Fair, Leila Heller Gallery, Online Art Fair
2010 Art Abu Dhabi, Leila Heller Gallery, Abu Dhabi, UAE Tehran – New York, Leila Heller Gallery, New York, NY
Art Dubai, Leila Heller Gallery, Dubai, UAE
2009 Art Abu Dhabi, Leila Heller Gallery, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Iran Inside Out, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, NY
Selseleh/Zelzeleh: Movers & Shakers in Contemporary Iranian Art, curated by Dr. Layla Diba, Leila Heller Gallery, New York, NY
2008 Just Paper, Leila Heller Gallery, New York, NY
Ahmadi & Zhang: Looking Back, the Feldman Gallery at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, OR
Distant Shores: Cultural Exchange in Contemporary Art, McIninch Art Gallery, Manchester, NH Conference of the Birds, Leila Heller Gallery, in cooperation with B & S Projects, London
2007 Merging influences, Eastern Elements in New American Art, Montserrat Art Gallery, Boston, MA
2006 Figuratively speaking, Elga Wimmer Gallery, New York, NY
2005 Three Positions, Lombard\Freid Projects, New York, NY
Atomica, Lombard\Freid project and Esso Gallery, New York, NY
Portland Museum of Art Biennial, Portland, ME
Cross Current, Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, Birmingham, MI
SELECTED MUSEUM COLLECTIONS
Metropolitan Museum of Arts, New York, NY
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles CA
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
Crocker Museum, Sacramento, CA
Manetti Shrem Museum, Davis, CA
Asian Museum of Arts, San Francisco
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University
Asia Society Museum, New York, NY
DePaul University Art Museum, Chicago, IL
Morgan Library, New York
Wayne State University Art Collection
Grey Art Gallery, New York
Black Gold Museum, Riaz, Saudi Arabia
The Farjam Collection, Dubai
His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
California State University, Stanislaus
Dr. Britt Rios-Ellis, President
Dr. Richard Ogle, Provost/Vice President of Academic Affairs
Dr. James A. Tuedio, Dean, College of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Department of Art
Martin Azevedo, Professor, Chair
Artur Da Silva, Assistant Professor
Dean De Cocker, Professor
Daniel Edwards, Professor
Jessica Gomula-Kruzic, Professor
Dr. Carmen Robbin, Professor
Ellen Roehne, Lecturer
Dr. Staci Scheiwiller, Professor
Susan Stephenson, Professor
Jake Weigel, Professor
Mirabel Wigon, Assistant Professor
Noely Ortiz, Administrative Support Coordinator
Alex Quinones, Instructional Tech II
Matt Hayes, Equipment Technician II
University Art Galleries
Dean De Cocker, Director
Noely Ortiz, Administrative Support Coordinator
School of the
Arts
Brad Peatross, Graphic Specialist II
Shiva Ahmadi - Fables of Fire and Water
October 16–December 19, 2025 | University Art Gallery, California State University, Stanislaus
200 copies printed. Copyright © 2025 California State University, Stanislaus • ISBN 978-1-940753-95-9
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher. This exhibition and catalog have been funded by Associated Students Instructionally Related Activities, California State University, Stanislaus.
