Sheree Hovsepian

Sheree Hovsepian, Deserted Body, silver gelatin print, ceramic, wood, nails and velvet in walnut artist's frame, 31.5" x 25.5" x 3.5", 2022. Sheree Hovsepian (born 1974) is an Iranian-born American artist. Her art, which includes photography, collage, sculpture and drawing, explores Identity, subjectivity and representation through the lens of embodiment and a visual language of shapes, objects and associations. Her most recognizable works—shadow-boxed photo-assemblages that interweave figurative imagery with natural and manufactured materials—are characterized by their divergent impulses toward formalism, the handmade, poetic metaphor and a contemporary examination of female experience. Critics note how these pieces treat photography as sculptural material to produce synthetic compositions, blurring boundaries between abstraction and figuration, as well as different media. Guggenheim New York, Art Institute of Chicago, and Shah Garg Collection, among others. She has exhibited at the 59th Venice Biennial (2022) and at institutions including MoMA, the Berkeley Art Museum, Center for Photography at Woodstock, International Center of Photography, Israel Museum, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and Tang Museum.

Biography Sheree Hovsepian was born in 1974 in Isfahan, Iran. She graduated with a dual BFA/BA from the University of Toledo in 1999, after attending the Glasgow School of Art the prior year. During her time in Chicago, Hovsepian met her future husband, artist Rashid Johnson, with whom she has one child. In the same year, Hovsepian was appointed to the board of directors of the Toledo Museum of Art.

Hovsepian has had solo exhibitions at Uffner & Liu (formerly Rachel Uffner Gallery) and Higher Pictures in New York City, Monique Meloche (Chicago),

Work and reception Hovsepian employs an additive, layering working method, with photography serving as a catalyst to other formats and means—an approach similar to artists Sophie Calle, Annette Messeger and Ana Mendieta, whose use of the medium yielded diverse aesthetic and psychological explorations. In the latter works, she made photograms by partially obscuring the paper surface with sculptural arrangements of opaque objects or by moving materials across the paper's surface; the resulting prints served as a register of her performative gestural actions and physical presence. Her materials are chosen for their resonances. String, for example, connects to both drawing and gendered handiwork, while ceramic shares with photography a process that involves impression, chemical transformation and the risk of failure. They shared a visual language of common, increasingly biomorphic shapes. Museum of Modern Art, and Zabludowicz Collection, among others.

She has received artist residencies from the American Academy in Rome (2024), as well as Aljira, the Banff Centre, Centre for Contemporary Photography (Toronto), The Drawing Center, Toledo Museum of Art, and Vermont Studio Center, among others.