Sheree Hovsepian
NEW YORK, NY
SHEREE HOVSEPIAN
Born in Isfahan, Iran in 1974, Sheree Hovsepian immigrated to the United States when she was two years old. Raised in Toledo, Ohio, she attended the University of Toledo for her dual Bachelor of Fine Arts/Bachelor of Arts and continued her education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, earning a Master of Fine Arts. She is known for her assemblage works that incorporate silver gelatin photographs, ceramic, string and other ephemera, much of which she makes herself, evidencing the hand of the artist. Hovsepian's subject matter often includes the human body, alternatively revealed and obfuscated by a variety of constructions in varying shapes. She uses her sister as her model, a stand-in for herself.
Hovsepian has had solo exhibitions at Monique Meloche Gallery, Halsey McKay Gallery and Higher Pictures. Group exhibitions include Seductive Reduction, CHART Gallery, New York (2019); Material Gestures, Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago (2019); and Where Do We Stand?, The Drawing Center, New York (2017). Her work is in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum, Bronx Museum, Studio Museum of Harlem, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Spertus Museum, Chicago, and the Zabludowicz Collection, London.
For her interview with The Artist Profile Archive, Sheree was interviewed at Higher Pictures in New York City during her exhibition there in 2019. Also included in her profile is her digital art piece, The Difference Between the Signals, published in December, 2018 by the art and literature magazine, Triple Canopy.
“Some of the themes that I find recurring in my work are ideas of location, the ideas of a studio being a center for ideas and transgression and locating myself within a space. I grew up as an immigrant from Iran in Northwest Ohio where I was constantly aware of my presence and my body within a larger space, being different. And I find that I’m constantly trying to locate myself or position myself within a space, and that space for me has become a studio space quite often.
I spoke Farsi when I came here and then picked up English through television and just living in the States. An outsider ... I felt very much like that. And especially someplace like Northwest Ohio that is not very diverse. My parents being immigrants, it always seemed like there were systems that they were trying to navigate that they didn’t know how to, or that there wasn’t access to. It seemed like this blockage, which resulted in me feeling very isolated, and very self-aware. And also things like skin color and other physical monikers that made me seem different than the people I was growing up around made me very aware of my physicality.”
SC: What would happen if your sister decided that she did not want to be your model anymore?
SH: That's a good question. Well, I suppose I would have to adapt and find something else. That's just what happens. Things change all the time. I lost the darkroom that I was working in here in New York City because they're kind of disappearing. And so I had to adapt and figure out what the next phase was going to be or how the work would change. It's what happens.
“I think art is important because it gives people a place to think and dream and to sit in reverie without fear. And it’s my hope that we allow this to still happen and that censorship doesn’t find its way into the arts because I think it’s very important for people to have that freedom to be able to have these personal meditations and ideas that might not be easily spoken about, but can be invoked by the communication between an artist and a viewer.”
