Solemani Awarded MacColl Johnson Grant

Sheida Solemani (Photography ’15) received a $25,000 MacColl Johnson grant. Every year, the Robert and Margaret MacColl Johnson Fellowship Fund awards three emerging artists a $25,000 fellowship with one string attached — they must live in Rhode Island.

Solemani’s most recent exhibition, titled “Civil Liberties,” superimposes the faces of Iranian women — whose executions have not been documented or publicized — onto life-size, nugget-shaped pillows. The pillows are set against a three-dimensional collage of sometimes mundane, sometimes brutal photographs and artifacts. She created 12 works in the series, which was recently exhibited at galleries in Providence, Chicago and London.

She intends to use her fellowship money to travel, purchase a new camera, and experiment with framing her photographs in bulletproof glass.