Artists: G - Z: Hadieh Shafie

A constant element of my work has been the significance of process, repetition and time all rooted in the influence of Islamic art & craft. What interest me is the tension between control and spontaneity that emerges at every step of creating much of the work.

In works comprised of paper scrolls, individual strips of paper have been marked with hand-written and printed Farsi (Persian language) text. Writing on the strips of paper is like making notes on the pages of a printed book to emphasize a certain passages that have a deeper resonance for the reader.

In this case, I repeat what is printed, fill in gaps or emphasize a particular form. For each work I decide on a limited color palette. As I roll the paper the color on the edges of the paper align, creating bands of alternating color. At this stage I am observing the color formations, which are always a delightful surprise. I may decide to repeat the color sequence but most of the time I encourage myself to let go so that spontaneous grouping of colors continue to emerge.

Each strip is then tightly rolled to create a core, around which successive strips are added. During the repetitive process of adding paper strips to create individual rolls, text and symbols are sometimes revealed and often hidden within the concentric rings of the finished object. There are compositions of printed and handwritten text sealed in the work that I often wish I could see again, but now it has been relinquished to the perpetual turning of the paper. I never know what the final configuration of each scroll within the framing box will be until the final assembly. Placing each scroll side by side decisions are made about color and composition at every step and the work progresses much like a painting or drawing.

The time it takes to make each work can vary and the time spent in writing and rolling the strips of paper is an important part of the performative aspect of making. The title of each piece documents the number of individual strips of paper that complete the work. Concentric forms of text and material take direct inspiration from the Sama dance of the whirling dervishes and the act of turning-on-axis in search of ascendance through forgetting the body. 

Repeated in the drawings and the hybrids is the same Farsi word for love, or “eshghe”. In choosing to ignore the rules of calligraphy I create work that is grounded in the expressive beauty and individual power of the untrained hand. In addition, by removing certain language markers, such as the dots that signify specific vowel soundings, I eliminate a communicative element. The repetition of text and this particular word is a recurring element in much of the work of the last decade.

Mawlana Muhammad Rumi’s poetry and the search for the dervish within are at the core of my own search and rebellion, with the resulting work as the physical expression of my search.

Shafie Hadieh graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, MD with a BFA in Painting. She earned her MFA in Painting from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY as well as UMBC, MFA Imaging and Digital Art, MD. She is the recipient of several awards and honors, two of which are Franz and Virginia Bader Fund, Washington D.C. 2011 and nominated to the Jameel Prize at V&A Museum, London, UK 2011. She has recently sold work at Sotheby’s, London Annual Modern and Contemporary Arab and Iranian Art Sale. She has exhibited extensively; Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK; Pulse Art Fair, New York, NY, Washington Project for the Arts, Washington D.C. and more. Upcoming exhibits for 2012 Casa Arabe, Madrid, Spain; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA; and Institute du Monde Arabe, Paris, France. Many private collectors in Europe, Middle East, and North America purchased her works, as well as public collectors encompassing such as Bank of America, Corporation Collection, North Carolina; Art in Embassies, Public Collection, Dubai, UAE; and Salsali Collection. Hadieh has been noted in such publications as, The Washington Post, The Art Economist, The Huffington Post and The Brooklyn Rail.