Sholeh Asgary: Tahrir

Sholeh Asgary (born Iran) works across performance, sound, installation, archival and collective processes to investigate the complexities of life and survival within diasporic and refugee experience. Sound is both Asgary’s primary material and deepest conceptual concern, allowing her to render histories and structures of power present and felt. Her works challenge historical assumptions about what is remembered and valued, attending to the ways sonic and somatic sensation carry stories across bodies and borders.

This exhibition brings together Horizon (2026) and Tahrir (2026), two major installations that transform seemingly invisible forces into material and sensorial encounters. Horizon traces the intertwined story of almonds and pistachios in Iran and California. Clay formations, resembling topographic soil horizons glazed with pistachio ash, move through the gallery like a river or scorched earth. The work draws connections between distant yet similar landscapes, foregrounding histories of cultivation, migration, extraction, and the pursuit of empire.

In Arabic and Farsi, tahrir means both freedom and a traditional style of Persian singing. In this installation, Asgary transforms oscillating fans into a network of sonic sculptures that evoke the sirens of war and the wails of lamentation. Mapping US military sites across the Middle East, Tahrir transforms the hidden structures of warfare and power into sonic and physical experience. Together, the two works make the movement of crops, capital, air, and sound palpable; creating space between mourning and possibility where grief becomes regenerative and listening offers a way to trace connections between personal inheritance and larger political histories.