Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi: A leaf from my rose garden

Organized by SECCA; Curated by Steven Matijcio

This exhibition is presented with the support of ART + Islam, a project of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at the UNC School of the Arts

The fluid, dream-like navigation of trans-national iconographies (and their attendant ideologies) inform the work of young Iranian-American artist Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi. Meeting in the garden paradises of Islamic myth, she marries contrasting traditions of ornamental Persian painting with the defiant splatters and pours of Western abstraction. This exhibition gathers a select grouping of Ilchi’s paintings from the past three years, highlighting her increasingly sculptural application of paint, and her increasingly painterly rendering of politics. At the intersection, figures, animals and armies swim in and out of focus – negotiating a place where the borders of aesthetics are redrawn.