EXCERPT: Born to political refugees who fled Iran in the wake of the 1979 Revolution, Sheida Soleimani’s experience growing up Iranian-American was paradoxically shaped by nostalgia and trauma alike. Like many of her generation, she found herself caught between two Irans: the one her parents once knew and loved before the revolution; and the one that nearly killed them. The racist ignorance of an American society that could not distinguish between the two, which she also endured as a result of her heritage, added to her conflicted sense of identity and belonging….Hotbed, 2020, from which the show takes its name, invokes another form of effacement. The photograph is based on the now infamous televised address by Iran’s Deputy Health Minister, Iraj Harirchi, during which he assured Iranian folks he had COVID under control. In her inimitable way, Soleimani’s satirization of the minister’s ludicrous assertions, made as he wiped a sweaty brow, and the day before he tested positive himself, is a carnivalesque mix of the ironic and sinister. Submerging all but the plaid-suited arm, hand, and shoulder of the Minister - all of which she outlines in lime powder - beneath fragmented aerial shots of cemetery plots, she creates a chaotic architecture of death…Soliemani’s diptych-esque wallpaper works, 1/8/2020 and PS752, with their finger-pointing showdown, are a hyperbolic embodiment of that, and a commentary on the ensuing blame game that exacerbated the decline of US-Iranian relations. The nearly identical cropped gray-suited forearms of each leader centered in these respective works are made virtually indistinguishable. So too, the hawk and dove perched atop each respective finger are turned into useless, empty signifiers, as interchangeable as Trump and Khamenei’s swaggering threats.” CATALOGUE WILL BE AVAILABLE SOON THROUGH THE GALLERY: https://dennydimingallery.com/