Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi describes her work as “the product of my multifaceted experience as an Iranian-American immigrant. It provides a space where my two disparate histories come together to reflect on cultural traditions and notions of belonging. By combining conventions of Western abstraction with conventions of Persian art, I explore contradictory painting processes and the ways in which they can be melded into a hybrid visual language. These pictorial clashes echo the erasure and distortion of cultural identities, evoking allegories of intrusion and invasion and moving beyond the personal to reference contemporary and historical interference.” Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi was born in Tehran, Iran and currently lives and works in the Washington, D.C. area. She received an M.F.A. in studio art from American University and a B.F.A. from the Corcoran College of Art + Design.