Gita Hashemi

Gita Hashemi (Persian: گیتا هاشمی, born 1961) is an Iranian-born artist, writer and curator residing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Her work juxtaposes history and the present, political and personal, and local and global. It draws on language as both visual and narrative element, and includes installation, video, and performance art, with collaborative, participatory and interactive strategies.

Biography Hashemi was born in Shiraz. Due to her vocal political stance, Hashemi was expelled from the College of Fine Arts at the University of Iran. In 1984, she was forced to leave Iran.

Career She is the first Iranian artist to perform calligraphy as a live art, which she refers to as embodied writing. She was an early practitioner of Net art and Digital art (early-1990s to mid-2000s). Leonardo wrote that Of Shifting Shadows causes the viewer to "move like nomads around this place of images and sounds, locating the place where we can arrive at an understanding of the depth of these experiences."

In 2013, she showed an exhibit called The Idea of Freedom at the Montréal Arts Interculturels (MAI).

In 2017, she was the first artist to use the Open Space Lab at Carleton University where she created large-scale Persian calligraphy based on the memoirs of a friend. and the Baddeck International New Media Festival award for disk-based work for Of Shifting Shadows. Her work has been shown at the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum and at the (Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Yucatan).

Publications Like Flesh and Blood Afghanistan, 2002: No Refuge The Idea of Freedom by Gita Hashemi