Crocker Art Museum purchase with funds provided by Cecilia Delury.
Haines is pleased to announce the acquisition of Shiva Ahmadi's Inferno's Embrace, 2024 by the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA.
Across multiple media, Ahmadi explores urgent global issues — including political oppression, violence, immigration, and women’s rights — through imagery shaped by current events and personal experience. In Inferno’s Embrace, part of a luminous watercolor series centered on female figures, the subject's body entwines with flora and fauna, invoking mythic and primordial power. Begun during the COVID-19 pandemic, this ongoing series took on new significance following the passing of Mahsa Amini, who died while being detained by Iran’s Morality Police for her “improper” hijab. In Ahamdi's works, the female body — and hair in particular — becomes a powerful site of resistance, vulnerability, and strength.
Inferno's Embrace joins an important work by Ahmadi already in the Crocker Art Museum’s collection — one of the artist's signature Oil Barrel sculptures, commissioned by the museum in 2022.
