Bullets and Boots
Artist
Shiva Ahmadi
(Iranian, born 1975)
Date2005
MediumWatercolor and gouache on paper
DimensionsPaper Size: 38 × 28 in. (96.5 × 71.1 cm)
Frame Size: 43 1/4 × 33 1/4 in. (109.9 × 84.5 cm)
ClassificationsDrawing
Credit LineGift of the artist, 2016
Object numberUAC6474
DescriptionShiva Ahmadi says that she “always hated” the kitschy reproductions of Persian miniatures that decorated her parents’ home in Tehran when she was growing up. Then, in 2003, while she was attending the Cranbrook Academy of Art, the US invaded Iraq; watching CNN coverage of the invasion, Ahmadi began to feel pangs of homesickness, and in search of the familiar she rediscovered and “fell in love” with the intricate narrative paintings of her homeland. The art she makes under their influence, however, is not reverential; in fact, her work repeatedly probes and undermines the mythological figures and power structures typically celebrated in Persian miniatures by superimposing the genre’s conventions onto the messy politics of the 21st century. Ahmadi’s tableaux often feature crowds of figures and animals brandishing hand grenades and cluster bombs, arrayed around gore-soaked thrones on which impassive leaders sit, their blank faces streaked with blood. Frequently, a tangle of gray oil pipelines crawls through the background of her paintings. By comparison, Wayne State’s Bullets and Boots is eerily empty. The courtyard door is hanging open, and the occupants of the vacant couch and scattered combat boots are conspicuous by their absence. Strangely, there are seven boots — not six or eight — and the pair in the foreground seems to have been vacated in mid-stride, deepening the mystery and suggesting a hasty, involuntary leave-taking. Rather than an ornate wall, the courtyard perimeter is lined with ammunition, its brass shell casings echoing the gold tiles and ornamentation around the two doorways, another ominous suggestion that the occupants of this place did not leave peacefully.Text by Sean Bieri
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Shiva Ahmadi was born in Tehran in 1975, just a few years before the Iranian Revolution. Though it was contraband under the strict Islamic regime, her parents would play a cassette tape of a social satire featuring a cast of animal characters while riding in the car with their daughter; the experience would later influence Ahmadi’s art. She saw the bloody toll of the Iran-Iraq war of the ‘80s while visiting the hospital where her mother worked as a doctor. Ahmadi studied abstract painting at university in Iran, then came to the US in 1998 to pursue degrees at Wayne State University (MA and MFA in drawing) and Cranbrook Academy of Art (MFA in painting). She makes sculptures, including modified oil barrels and pressure cookers that comment on violence in the Middle East, and video animation as well as paintings, and exhibits widely. She lives in California.
