Vertical Books
Much of Hadieh Shafie’s work is focused on the relationship of text to memory. Her body of paperwork reimagines the book form, in addition to exploring aspects of color and repetition. To create her sculptural paper pieces, Shafie marks strips of paper with text and rolls them into concentric circles, resembling the most fundamental form of a book – a scroll. The fore-edge of each strip offers the opportunity to delve into color relationships. Within the coils lie handwritten and printed Farsi text, sometimes hidden and other times revealed. In her most recent works, she has liberated the books of spike forms from their bounding frame. Instead, they are strung on wire, resting on each other to form a vertical structure. The text within the rolls of paper has now expanded to incorporate references to language rather than focusing solely on a single word. This evolution includes the fragmentation of textual forms, poetry, and streams of consciousness from the artist. In her exploration of the book form, the artist not only delves into the nuances of color and repetition but also prompts reflection on the parallels between language and environment. Her liberated books are a microcosm of interconnected forms of expression, offering a glimpse into the possibility of forging futures that transcend fabricated boundaries.

Optical Drawings
Shafie’s drawing practice utilizes repetition of language to form an all-over pattern. She then introduces breaks in the lines of text by cutting concentric circles and rotating the paper, resulting in a form of "action drawing" that generates movement in the drawn lines. These line breaks create optical movements reminiscent of ripples, which in turn connect to the notion of vibrations and sound. Presented in ‘Eco(ed) Visions’, the intricate lines of Shafie's drawings dance across the paper evoking a sense of harmony and balance amidst the chaos, resonating with the interplay between the natural world and human existence.

Hadieh Shafie, is an Iranian-born visual artist based in the United States. Collapsing the space between drawing, painting, and sculpture, her practice is at once process-oriented and overwhelming in its intricacy. Shafie’s work is in many public collections, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Victoria and Albert Museum; Bank of America, Corporation Collection; Art in Embassies, and Public Collection in Dubai, UAE. Her series of text-based color pencil drawing works in this exhibition explore the interplay of forms and patterns and the use of semantics as a way to interrogate visual meaning in both personal and political domains. Her approach to her works is evocative of sound waves, ripples, and dances, speaking to the exhibition’s vision of a vision of transience as a trance.