The Politics of Sight, 2025, Collected ceramic figurines, 18 x 3 x 2 in
SHAY SALEHI
Artist Statement
Anchored by a commitment to opposing animal exploitation, my interdisciplinary practice explores the complexities of human–nonhuman relationships. I examine sites of encounter (factory farms, roadsides, sanctuaries), dissecting these environments to reframe how power is negotiated across species. My research focuses on interrogating the frameworks that sustain human supremacy, including the ownership and commodification of nonhuman bodies. By tracing histories of dominance and domestication, I seek to open space for alternative futures grounded in interspecies solidarity.
Growing up in Canada as the child of Polish and Iranian parents, I was shaped by an early awareness of how knowledge is understood across cultural contexts. This perspective informs my attention to the systematic devaluation of animal knowledge within Western epistemologies and to the ways human centered frameworks obscure nonhuman perspectives. It guides my engagement with nonhuman ecologies, particularly in spaces where care and control converge, and where authority is exercised through both protection and regulation.
Across my practice, I employ strategies of recontextualization to unsettle dominant narratives of human–animal relations. Rather than resolving these tensions, my work sustains ambiguity, creating conditions for imagining more responsive and accountable forms of multispecies coexistence.