ROM Connects: Apocalyptic Playland- The Works of Shiva Ahmadi

Shiva Ahmadi works cover a broad diversity of media, including watercolour painting, sculpture, and video animation. Having come of age in the tumultuous years following the Iranian Revolution, Ahmadi moved to the United States in 1998 and has been based in California since 2015. Borrowing from the artistic traditions of Iran and the Middle East, she critically examines global political tensions and social concerns to create striking, provocative, and powerful creations.

As part of Being and Belonging, Shiva Ahmadi’s animation, Ascend (2017), begins as a utopian scene, with monkeys playfully popping bubbles by a pond with monkeys playfully popping bubbles. Slowly the bubbles transform into grenades and bombs, and the lifeless body of a boy washes up on the shore. Ahmadi describes her video as a metaphor for the plight of many Syrians forced to flee their homes for safety, only to face danger and uncertainty as refugees. Ahmadi says, “While the story is about Syrian refugees, it speaks to a universal condition, one that belongs to all of us, not just a specific demographic.”

Fahmida Suleman is Curator of the Islamic World collection at ROM, where she was lead curator on the recent ROM-original exhibition Unmasking the Pandemic: From Personal Protection to Personal Expression (2021), as well as the current exhibition Being and Belonging. Formerly the Phyllis Bishop Curator for the Modern Middle East at the British Museum (London, UK), her publications include Textiles of the Middle East and Central Asia: The Fabric of Life (2017), and most recently the companion volume to Being and Belonging: Contemporary Women Artists from the Islamic World and Beyond (2023).

Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi is Professor of History and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. Since 2002 he has served as the editor of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, a Duke University Press journal, and has served on the editorial board of Iranian Studies, the Journal of the International Society for Iranian Studies. The author of many books and articles, he has been the recipient of visiting fellowships at Oxford and Harvard Universities.