Sheree Hovsepian (born 1974) is an Iranian-born American artist.Mellin, Haley. "Sheree Hovsepian," Bomb, Spring 2017. Retrieved August 3, 2026.Rucker, Gabrielle Octavia. "Artist Sheree Hovsepian Abstracts the Body," Cultured, September 16, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2026. Her art, which includes photography, collage, sculpture and drawing, explores Identity, subjectivity and representation through the lens of embodiment and a visual language of shapes, objects and associations.Rawles, Erica. "Critics' Picks: Sheree Hovsepian," Artforum, March 2018. Retrieved August 3, 2026.Wallace, Ian. "Sheree Hovsepian," 59th Venice Biennale: The Milk of Dreams, Cecilia Alemani (ed.), Venice: La Biennale di Venezia, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2026.Laster, Paul. "8 Must-See Solo Gallery Exhibitions Around the Country This October: Sheree Hovsepian at Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York," Galerie, October 3, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2026.Mellin, Haley. "The Musings of Sheree Hovsepian," Garage, August 21, 2020. Her most recognizable works—shadow-boxed photo-assemblages that interweave figurative imagery with natural and manufactured materials—are characterized by their divergent impulses toward formalism, the handmade, poetic metaphor and a contemporary examination of female experience.Rodney, Seph. "The Arcs, Lines, and Body of Sheree Hovsepian's Studio Photography," Hyperallergic, June 21, 2019. Retrieved August 3, 2026.Molarsky-Beck, Marina. "How Sheree Hovsepian Builds a Body," Museum of Modern Art Magazine, May 18, 2026. Retrieved August 3, 2026.Behringer, David. "Sheree Hovsepian's Poetic Assemblages at Rachel Uffner Gallery," Design Milk, October 25, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2026.Woodcock, Victoria. "Three Iranian Women Fighting for Artistic Freedom," Financial Times, December 4, 2023. Retrieved August 3, 2026. Critics note how these pieces treat photography as sculptural material to produce synthetic compositions, blurring boundaries between abstraction and figuration, as well as different media.Wu, Poppy Dongxue. "Sheree Hovsepian," in Vitamin C+: Collage in Contemporary Art, London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 2023. Retrieved August 3, 2026. Hyperallergic critic Seph Rodney observes, "[Hovsepian] depicts sections of the body in conversation with angular forms that ride a fine line between art object, design element and utilitarian tool. The work all has the subtle feel of high Modernist composition, but demonstrates greater self-awareness of the politics that surround and inhabit our bodies."
Hovsepian's work is held by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA),Museum of Modern Art. Sheree Hovsepian, Artists. Retrieved August 3, 2026. Guggenheim New York,Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. "Guggenheim to Host 2018 Young Collectors Party," News, 2018. Retrieved August 3, 2026. Art Institute of Chicago,The Art Institute of Chicago. Sheree Hovsepian, Artists. Retrieved August 3, 2026. and Shah Garg Collection,Making Their Mark Foundation. "Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection Exhibition Tour." Retrieved August 3, 2026. among others. She has exhibited at the 59th Venice Biennial (2022)Alemani, Cecilia et.al. 59th Venice Biennale: The Milk of Dreams, Venice: La Biennale di Venezia, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2026.Herriman, Kat. "The Body Creates and Inspires at the 2022 Venice Biennale: Sheree Hovsepian in the Giardini," Cultured, April 21, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2026. and at institutions including MoMA,Museum of Modern Art. Sheree Hovsepian, Exhibitions, 2026. Retrieved August 3, 2026. the Berkeley Art Museum,Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. "Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection," 2024. Retrieved August 3, 2026. Center for Photography at Woodstock,Center for Photography at Woodstock. "The Rose," Exhibitions, 2025. Retrieved August 3, 2026. International Center of Photography,The City Life. "International Center of Photography (ICP) Explores Intimacy and Connection in Love Songs," June 12, 2023. Retrieved August 3, 2026. Israel Museum, National Museum of Women in the Arts,National Museum of Women in the Arts. "Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection," Exhibitions. Retrieved August 3, 2026. and Tang Museum.Tang Museum. "Never Done: 100 Years of Women in Politics and Beyond," Exhibitions, 2020. Retrieved August 3, 2026.
Biography Sheree Hovsepian was born in 1974 in Isfahan, Iran. Her family immigrated to the United States in 1976 and settled in Toledo, Ohio.Toledo Museum of Art. "Sheree Hovsepian, GAPP Artist," November 14, 2025. Retrieved August 3, 2026. She graduated with a dual BFA/BA from the University of Toledo in 1999, after attending the Glasgow School of Art the prior year. At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she studied under the late Barbara DeGenevieve and earned an MFA in 2002.Halperin, Julia and Ella Martin-Gachot, "Bisa Butler, Marilyn Minter, Jill Magid, and 14 Other Women Artists on the Mentors Who Shaped Them," Cultured, March 25, 2025. Retrieved August 3, 2026.Rosenthal, Emerson. "Sheree Hovsepian's Decisive Moment," Vice, June 6, 2016. Retrieved August 3, 2026. During her time in Chicago, Hovsepian met her future husband, artist Rashid Johnson, with whom she has one child.Falb, Sam. "Step Inside Rashid Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian's East Hampton Home for the Guggenheim's Annual Summer Cocktail," Cultured, August 1, 2025. Retrieved August 3, 2026. They are now based in New York City and Long Island, New York. In 2026, the couple launched a long-term residency for artists and writers on the Balearic island of Menorca, The Residency at Casa Gràcia, in collaboration with the gallery Hauser & Wirth.Artforum. "Rashid Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian Launch Menorca Residency with Hauser & Wirth," May 27, 2026. Retrieved August 3, 2026.Tattoll, Chantal. "An Art World Soiree in a Secret Garden on Minorca," The New York Times, July 7, 2026. Retrieved August 3, 2026. In the same year, Hovsepian was appointed to the board of directors of the Toledo Museum of Art.Toledo Museum of Art. "Toledo Museum of Art Announces Three New Members of Board of Directors," July 8, 2026. Retrieved August 3, 2026.
Hovsepian has had solo exhibitions at Uffner & Liu (formerly Rachel Uffner Gallery) and Higher Pictures in New York City,Heinrich, Will. "Sheree Hovsepian," The New Yorker, March 30, 2017. Retrieved August 3, 2026. Monique Meloche (Chicago),Foumberg, Jason. "Sheree Hovsepian: Reveries of a Solitary Walker," Photograph Magazine, September 2015. Team Bungalow (Los Angeles), Halsey McKay Gallery (East Hampton, NY), Château La Coste (Provence) and Carling Dalenson (Stockholm), among others.Berg, Allison. "Ma Sheree Amour," Hamptons Magazine, July 6, 2020. Retrieved August 3, 2026.Roux, Caroline. "Rashid-Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian Fill Chateau La Coste with Friends," Galerie Magazine, July 20, 2026. Retrieved August 3, 2026.Muntean, Natalia. "Sheree Hovsepian is (still) becoming," Odalisque, April 14, 2026. Retrieved August 3, 2026.
Work and reception Hovsepian employs an additive, layering working method, with photography serving as a catalyst to other formats and means—an approach similar to artists Sophie Calle, Annette Messeger and Ana Mendieta, whose use of the medium yielded diverse aesthetic and psychological explorations.Wally, Maxine. "Artist Sheree Hovsepian On This Year's Women-Led Venice Biennale," W Magazine, April 19, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2026. Her images, strategies and forms assert the history, physicality and materiality of making photographs.Cotton, Charlotte. The Photograph As Contemporary Art (World Of Art), New York: Thames & Hudson, 2020.
Early conceptual photography Hovsepian's early series, running from roughly 2011 to 2016, gravitated toward conceptual expansions of photography that straddled abstraction and figuration, and drawings and photographs. This work was typically camera-less and involved physical interactions with materials in her studio, such as pinpricking photographic paper, pushing the limits of multiple-exposure photography (the "Sleight of Hand" series), or exposing photosensitive paper to blasts of light (the "Haptic Wonders" series).Rattemeyer, Christian. "Sheree Hovsepian: Magic Matter," Osmos Magazine, Spring 2016. In the latter works, she made photograms by partially obscuring the paper surface with sculptural arrangements of opaque objects or by moving materials across the paper's surface; the resulting prints served as a register of her performative gestural actions and physical presence.
Photo-assemblages Hovsepian's exhibitions at Higher Pictures (2017, 2019), Monique Meloche (2018) and the Venice Biennial (2022) centered on wall-based, shadow-box-like assemblages that extended her conceptual works into three-dimensions. In formal, geometric arrangements that abstracted and echoed the human form, she integrated intimate, fragmented images of the figure, photograms and common materials into a vocabulary of shapes and lines. Artforum critic Erica Rawles linked the assemblages to Hovsepian's prior series, commenting "the strong sense of motion across the works—twisting anatomies, folds in paper, and stretching nylon—echo the performative aspects of exposing and shielding light-sensitive paper. This practice persists in the ultimate compositions, as the photograms themselves now conceal and reveal other materials" (e.g., Introvert or Under Influence, both 2018).
For her assemblages, Hovsepian captures cropped parts of the female body, photographing her sister as a stand-in; the practice enables the artist to simultaneously be subject and maker, creating what are, loosely, self-portraits. She deploys silver-gelatin prints of the sectioned body as formal elements, building improvised figures in a manner likened to the "exquisite corpse" method by combining handmade ceramic forms and tactile materials like nylon hosiery, wood, string tied to nails and black velvet (e.g., Deserted Body, 2022).Ajudua, Christine. "Artist Sheree Hovsepian Creates Tender Collages With Photos, Ceramics, and String," Artnet, June 24, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2026. Her materials are chosen for their resonances. String, for example, connects to both drawing and gendered handiwork, while ceramic shares with photography a process that involves impression, chemical transformation and the risk of failure. Hovsepian sets the compositions within hand-crafted walnut frames. The constructed bodies are deliberately provisional and unsettled, they reflect her experiences, as an immigrant and woman, of difference, fragmented consciousness, and the body as a politically charged site.
Critics note Hovsepian's manipulation of movement, form and rhythm in the assemblages to heighten awareness of weight, gesture and the sensuality and fluidity of the female body. Playing the angles, curves and points of the human form (hip, elbow, shoulder) off of those of echoing objects (a flower, spool of twine, ceramic piece), she creates metaphors for various subjective and bodily states. The compositions employ an interplay of concealment and suggestion, hinting at purposes, relationships and collaborations between the body and objects (e.g., Rapport, 2024).
Expanded practice