Sholeh Asgary

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT SHOLEH ASGARY

Sholeh Asgary (b. Iran 1982) is an interdisciplinary artist whose works implicate the viewer participant in future mythological excavations, bridging large swathes of time and history through water, water clocks, movement, light, imaging, voice, and sound. Asgary\'s early somatic experiences in constant movement across borders influence her. From this positionality lies an inherent tension throughout her work: between visibility and opacity, history and myth, worldmaking and death-with none in opposition to the other. This complexity drives the core of her work. Asgary\'s sound performances use her voice (the body), the environment (place), and the innate properties of everyday objects as an ether for direct communication in an otherwise disparate circumstance of image. She explores materials and concepts used in her larger practice through improvisational performance, such as water clocks, AM transmission, frequency interference, and language. Her practice is a conglomeration of visual, sound, and collective processes, all of which she is deeply committed to. Featured in Art in America\'s 2022 \"New Talent Issue,\" Asgary’s work is exhibited in the 20••••24 triennial Bay Area Now 9 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in Oakland, CA, and in the 2024 Getty initiative, PST ART. Her work has been presented by such institutions as the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Minnesota Street Project, 500 Capp St, Sotheby\'s Institute of Art, Stanford University, The Lab, and Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. Numerous residencies have supported her practice, including Headlands Center for the Arts, MASS MoCA, Berkeley Art Center, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Culture Hub, and ARoS Kunstmuseum. Asgary is a 2023 Artadia Finalist, recipient of a 2021 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant for her solo exhibition at TSA in New York, a 2019 Kenneth Rainin Foundation New Program Grant as a composer for Dance Elixir, a 2020 California Arts Council Grant for her program MAJLES, a 2022 Center for Cultural Innovation grant, and recipient of the 2014 Alternative Exposure Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for curatorial initiatives as the previous Curator and Director of Education and Public Programs at Incline Gallery, where she founded The Project Room. Asgary is a UCLA Art|Sci Collective member, a co-founder of Iranians for Abolition, and serves on the Curatorial Council for Southern Exposure. Asgary is a Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and California College of the Arts.