The International Center of Photography (ICP) is presenting "Panjereh," a solo exhibition by Iranian-American artist Sheida Soleimani. The title "Panjereh," which means "window" or "passage" in Farsi, continues her acclaimed "Ghostwriter" series, where she explores her parents' experiences of political exile and migration as a lens to examine broader geopolitical systems. The exhibition, curated by guest curator Elisabeth Sherman, will feature more than forty photographs, the vast majority of which have never been shown in New York.

Soleimani is renowned for her complex studio compositions that blend photography, props, live animals, and even her own parents in surreal and magical scenes. In "Panjereh," she expands her practice with the launch of a new body of work featuring injured birds. These images are inspired by her work as an animal rehabilitator and founder of the Congress of the Birds, a federally licensed wild bird rehabilitation center in Rhode Island. The exhibition will also include a new site-specific mural drawing created especially for ICP's galleries.

Curator Elisabeth Sherman explains the significance of Soleimani's work: "In her practice, Soleimani uniquely weaves the complex particularities of her family's history, her deep research into geopolitics, and her inherited passion for care work into a visual language that is entirely her own. The magically inventive spaces she creates allow these stories to be told with complexity, honoring their richness and ever-evolving nature. It is a true honor to present her first institutional solo exhibition in New York, specifically at an institution historically dedicated to photography that engages with the politics of our time."

The "Ghostwriter" series draws on Soleimani's family history, particularly her parents' flight from Iran as political refugees after the 1979 revolution, as an overarching conceptual framework that informs her creative process. This extends from the meaning of family objects and ephemera used in compositions to the photographs themselves. The series resembles a form of "ghostwriting" in how it tells and reconstructs her parents' lives without directly using their voices. The works focus on their life in Iran as pro-democracy activists before being forced to flee the country, endure physical and psychological trials, and resettle in the United States.

Soleimani's mother was forced to abandon her nursing career, which led her to care for wild birds—a skill she would later pass on to her daughter. Through their personal approach, the "Ghostwriter" works reflect Soleimani's long-standing interest in Iranian history and contemporary geopolitics between the West and the Middle East. Rather than approaching this history through a strictly documentary lens, Soleimani examines narrative and memory as the primary vehicles for transmitting these stories. The construction of her images captures how details and meaning are often obscured, transformed, or difficult to fully grasp.

This process is expressed through the degree of visual compression and accumulation of detail contained in Soleimani's photographs. Specific passages, details, or textures—fauna and flora, architecture and landscape—regularly function as substitutes and metaphors rather than simple descriptions. Soleimani places objects from her parents' journey against backgrounds composed of images drawn from various archival family photographs, creating works composed of multiple narratives that document factual traces of history in newly imagined spaces.

New to the "Ghostwriter" series are the "Flyways" photographs, which draw attention to the plight of migratory birds, many of whom are injured during their long journeys through inhabited areas. Soleimani's work as a federally licensed wildlife rehabilitation specialist stems from a practice of care she learned from her mother and is part of a broader cultural heritage passed down to her. Playing the role of main characters, the birds that Soleimani photographs and places in her tableaux offer a metaphor for the many social, political, and environmental obstacles encountered by people forced to flee.

This new set of analog photographs of rehabilitated birds created by Soleimani presents a unique maximalism despite their small size, while renouncing the complex layering of references and images typical of the "Ghostwriter" series. Shot in extreme close-up, these works represent the birds' bodies as complex and intensely detailed worlds, where feathers, talons, and eyes are described with as much richness as Soleimani's family history is explored. The acts of care contained in these images highlight the relationship between compassion and political resistance that has developed not only within Soleimani's family but remains crucially important for our time.

Sheida Soleimani, born in 1990, is an Iranian-American artist, educator, and activist. The daughter of political refugees who fled Iran in the early 1980s, Soleimani creates works that explore the histories of violence connecting Iran, the United States, and the Southwest Asia and North Africa region. Working across multiple forms and media including photography, sculpture, collage, and film, she often appropriates source images from popular and digital media and repositions them in defamiliarizing tableaux.

Her compositional approach depends on the question being asked. For example, how to do justice to survivors' testimonies and the survivors themselves ("To Oblivion")? What are the connections between oil, corruption, and human rights violations among OPEC countries ("Medium of Exchange")? How do nations develop reparations agreements that often transform the ethics of historical injustice into a playground for their own economic interests ("Reparations Packages")? How can the layering of memory and family history both account for facts and produce an understanding of the intimate resonances of a geopolitics of violence ("Ghostwriter")? Unlike Western media, which rarely addresses these issues, Soleimani creates works that persuade viewers to confront them directly and effectively.

Soleimani's works are held in permanent collections including the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the MIT List Visual Art Center, and Kadist Paris. Her work has been recognized internationally through exhibitions and publications including The New York Times, Financial Times, Art in America, Interview Magazine, and many others. Based in Providence, Rhode Island, Soleimani is also an associate professor of studio art at Brandeis University and a federally licensed wildlife rehabilitation specialist.

"Sheida Soleimani: Panjereh" runs through September 28, 2025, at the International Center of Photography, located at 84 Ludlow Street, New York, NY 10002.