Hadieh Shafie was born in Tehran, Iran in 1969. Currently based in the United States, the artist constructs intricate designs with low-relief paper sculpture. Her compositions are reminiscent of traditional Middle Eastern art, while the artist hides hand-written and printed Farsi text within the folds of elaborate paper spirals. Both process-oriented and impossibly refined, Shafie’s skillful works are often monumental in scale, overwhelming the viewer with a visual feast of colour.
Shafie’s work is in major institutional collections including: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (USA); The Victoria and Albert Museum (UK); Bank of America, The Columbus Museum, (USA); Sheldon Museum of Art (USA) ; The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art (USA); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); The British Museum (UK); and The Brooklyn Museum of Art (USA), amongst others.
She holds an MFA in Imaging and Digital Arts from the University of Maryland (USA) and an MFA in Painting from Pratt Institute (USA). Shafie has been the recipient of grants from the Kress Foundation, RTKL and MSAC Individual Artist Grant (2010 and 2008) and the Mary Sawyers Baker awards from the William G. Baker Jr. Memorial Fund (2009) and Franz and Virginia Bader Fund (2011). In 2011, Shafie was shortlisted for the prestigious Jameel Prize, Victoria and Albert Museum (UK) and in 2017 nominated for the Anonymous Was a Woman Award, New York Foundation of the Arts (USA).