About

Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi is an Iranian-American artist whose creative practice is a navigation of her multifaceted experiences as an immigrant. Ilchi’s paintings provide a space where her two disparate histories come together to reflect on cultural traditions and notions of belonging. By combining conventions of Western abstraction with conventions of Persian art, Ilchi explores contradictory painting processes and the ways in which they can be melded into a hybrid visual language. These pictorial clashes echo the erasure and distortion of cultural identities, evoking allegories of intrusion and invasion and moving beyond the personal to reference contemporary and historical interference.

Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi was born in Tehran, Iran and currently lives and works in the Washington, D.C. area. Ilchi received an M.F.A. in studio art from American University and a B.F.A. from the Corcoran College of Art + Design. She is the recipient of the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellowship, VisArts Studio Fellowship, Charm City Fellowship, Zeta Orionis Painting Fellowship, Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Painting, and Bethesda Painting Award. Ilchi has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally. Her work has been featured in many publications including The Washington Post, Hyperallergic, Art Papers, the Washington City Paper, and New American Paintings. Ilchi has attended residencies at the Ucross Foundation, Millay Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Jentel Foundation, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Playa Summer Lake, Monson Arts and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work is in private and public collections including The Phillips Collection, The Federal Reserve Board, The Microsoft Art Collection, and the Carl M. Freeman Foundation. Ilchi is represented by Hemphill ARTWORKS Gallery in Washington, D.C. and is currently serving as one of the 2023-2024 McMillan Stewart Endowed Chairs in Painting at Maryland Institute College of Art.