Robert Heinecken and the Art of Appropriation

Artist 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. Through constructing staged sets in her studio and documenting them with the camera, Soleimani focuses on the dissemination of information, adapting images from press and social media leaks to exist within alternative scenarios. Soleimani is the daughter of political refugees persecuted by the Iranian government in the 1980s; as such, engagement with Iran is an ongoing facet of her practice.

Professor of the History of Photography at Rutgers, the State University in New Jersey, Andrés Mario Zervigón is author of John Heartfield and the Agitated Image (2012) and Photography and Germany (2017). With Tanya Sheehan he edited Photography and Its Origins (2014), with Sabine Kriebel Photography and Doubt (2017), and with Donna Gustafson Subjective-Objective: A Century of Social Photography (2017). His current book project is a history of Die Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung, for which he received a CASVA Senior Fellowship (2013-14). Zervigón leads The Developing Room, an academic working group at Rutgers devoted to photography studies.

Rail Editor-At-Large Matthew Biro is Professor in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Anselm Kiefer and the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger (1998), The Dada Cyborg: Visions of the New Human in Weimar Berlin (2009), and Anselm Kiefer (2013). His reviews of contemporary art, film, and photography have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, Contemporary, Art Papers, and The New Art Examiner.

Born and raised in Canada, Anne Doran (b. 1957) lives and works in New York. Her work has been included in exhibitions at MoMA P.S.1, Long Island City, NY; The Kitchen, New York; Artists Space, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; and 303 Gallery, New York and has been reviewed in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Village Voice, among other publications. She has a solo exhibition on view at MARCH until July 29, 2022.