Sholeh Asgary

Sholeh Asgary (b. Iran) engages performance, interdisciplinary forms, and collective processes to explore, memorialize, and express the complexities of joy and survival in diasporic and refugee experiences. Her primary material and deepest conceptual concern is sound. Through site-specific installations, sound sculptures, performance, archival projects, and collaborations, her work challenges colonial assumptions about what is heard and proposes new futures through sound.

Her work has been released with Sming Sming Books and SONDUKE and featured in Art in America’s New Talent Issue. Recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include the Pacific Standard Time–Getty exhibition Atmosphere of Sound (2024) and the 2027 Further Triennial. Asgary is a 2023 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts BAN9 artist, an Artadia finalist, and a 2026 SECA Award finalist at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her performances have been presented by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Sotheby’s, ARoS Kunstmuseum, Kadist, The Lab, and Stanford University. Her practice has been supported by Headlands Center for the Arts, MASS MoCA, Yucca Valley Material Lab, and CultureHub, with grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the California Arts Council. Asgary is Assistant Professor of New Genres at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.