Fahimeh's profile
Fahimeh Vahdat is an Iranian American Mixed Media Installation / Performance artist, Women & Children / Human Rights Activist living in the Greater Baltimore / Washington DC region. She has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally and has received numerous awards including the 2020 Maryland State Individual Artist grant, the 2018 Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Rubys project grant, the NEA Regional and Puffin Foundation grant for a collaborative stage work for a play. In 2022, she was nominated for the Anonymous Was a Woman Award and was one of the six finalists in the Inter-and Multi-Disciplinary Art category at the Baker Artist Award, 2022, and 2023.
Vahdat has exhibited her work nationally and internationally recently at Arlington Art Center, Irving Art Center, Yinchuan Art Museum, China, Cultural Art Center in Argentina, Milwaukee Art Museum, and the University of Italy in Naples to name a few.
Among other professional engagement within the community, Vahdat is involve with Amnesty International, Change.org and the Howard County Human Rights office in Columbia. Her art addresses a wide range of human rights issues, including violence against women and children especially domestic violence, and the prison system, particularly in the US and Iran.
Vahdat has been a visiting artist at various residencies, including the national Printmaking Residency at MIAD in Milwaukee, 2022 and the Printmaker Residency in Edinburgh, Scotland, 2019. She has also been a Wampler Eminent Visiting Artist/Scholar at James Madison University and a yearlong artist-in-residence at RedLine Milwaukee, where the intersection of art and social justice meet.
Social activism on violence against women and girls especially domestic violence violations in Iran and the USA has become a part of Vahdat’s art making process and teaching over the span of 30 years. Vahdat views activism in her art as an important tool to catalyze social consciousness and to encourage community and public participation for positive change.
The multi-mixed media installation, titled "Sacred Crossings," serves as a robust and research-driven body of work that viscerally documents the grave violations against human rights in Iran—specifically, the brutal torture and execution of innocent Baha’is who steadfastly refused to recant their faith. Notably, this involves the execution of my two uncles and the public hanging of my 32-year-old cousin, a volunteer nurse, along with nine other young women in Shiraz, solely for their faith. The recent women-led uprising in Iran, sparked by the powerful "women, life, freedom" movement, has unleashed a wave of street protest art, performances, and collaborative public art in the DC area. Besides my public performances, I am working on developing a mural dedicated to the Women-led uprising in Iran, triggered by the tragic death of 22-year-old Masha Amini at the hands of the morality police in Tehran for her defiance in wearing a hijab.
