Queens Rd, Clifton, Bristol BS8 1RL
14 Oct 2026 to
14 Feb 2027
Persistence Studies borrows its title from a term used in avian ecology: research that measures how long birds persist within a landscape, or how long their bodies remain before disappearing from it. These studies—used to estimate mortality, population change, and the unseen impacts of human infrastructure—rely on the tension between presence and absence, survival and disappearance.
Focusing on European Starlings and House Sparrows, two species native to the United Kingdom but introduced to North America, the exhibition considers the instability of categories such as native, invasive, and belonging. While both birds are widely regarded as invasive pests in the United States, their populations have undergone significant declines across parts of their native range. Through these shifting ecological narratives, Persistence Studies examines how value is assigned to life, how movement transforms identity, and what it means to endure within landscapes irrevocably shaped by human intervention.
Biography
Sheida Soleimani’s work explores intersections of art and activism, melding sculpture, performance, film and photography to highlight critical perspectives on events across the Middle East, unpicking the complex power dynamics between the region and western nations. Soleimani’s work interrogates the dissemination of information in digital contexts, adapting found images from press and social media leaks to exist within alternative scenarios. Her photographs document constructed sets within her studio, in which repeating images carve out trompe l’oeil perspectives in a visual metaphor for the competing political narratives relayed by her source materials.
Sheida Soleimani (b. 1990) received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2015. Recent solo exhibitions include Flyways, Harlan Levey Projects, Brussels, Belgium (2026); Forest of Stars, Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York, NY, USA (2026); What a Revolutionary Must Know, Cincinnatti Arts Center, Cincinnatti, OH, US (2025). In 2026 Soleimani was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Sheida Soleimani lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island.
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