BALTIMORE, MD.- RandallScottProjects presents Your Splendor Shall Soar Through The Ashes an exhibition by Washington DC based artist Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi.

In her work, Hedieh Ilchi explores the notion of “duality”, an ongoing necessity in order to comprehend her multifaceted cultural identity as an Iranian-American immigrant. Her paintings function as metaphors for the complexities that emanate from such polarized cultural experiences. These paintings reflect a fusion of visual conventions in Western abstraction and Persian Art, with an emphasis on the ornamentations of “Tazhib”, or the art of illumination. The resulting synthesis evokes allegories of intrusion and invasion, moving beyond the personal and referencing the historical and contemporary sociopolitical conflicts.

Ilchi utilizes the paradoxical notions of chance and control to create enigmatic environments where fluid and physical transgressions of paint meet the contemplative precisions of the hand. Paint transforms into land, earth, and molten matter as it flows, coagulates, and fissures throughout and beyond the boundaries of the painting surface, channeling aerial views, space and satellite imageries. The explosive passages of pigment and the meticulously painted patterns merge into an intensified visual dialogue, a depiction of the contradictory impulses in the social, political, and cultural contemporary context.

Hedieh Ilchi was born in Tehran, Iran and is currently living and working in the Washington DC area. Ilchi received her MFA in Studio Art from the American University in 2011 and her BFA with honors from the Corcoran College of Art + Design in 2006. She has received many awards including the Bethesda Painting Award, Robyn Rafferty Mathias International Research Mellon Grant from the American University and the Sons of the Revolution in the District of Columbia American Art Essay Prize. She was also a semifinalist for the eighth annual Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize. Ilchi has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Washington DC, Baltimore MD, New York City, Los Angles CA, Birmingham AL, and Winston-Salem NC. Her work has been reviewed in a number of publications including the Washington Post and Art Papers magazine. Ilchi is currently an artist in residence at the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, VA.