“With more than 500 artists applying for the award, it was no mean feat to arrive at a collective agreement on five with whom to do studio visits: so many incredible ideas and approaches to discern between. Devin, Erick, Hadi, Sable Elyse, and Sasha were all inspiring and thought provoking in their practices. Each is honing an approach to art-making that is unfamiliar (in the “I haven’t seen anything quite like this” way). The work is socially conscious and intense; personal, resourceful, and generative. They each offer a strong, unique, and uncompromising creative vision, leaving us with the impossible task of having to compare radically different outputs”.

-Kate Fowle & Justine Ludwig

Hadi Fallahpisheh (b. 1987, Tehran, Iran) works primarily with photography, as well as performance and installation to destabilize visions of a stable and singular subject. Often commenting on conditions of displacement, his work questions the ability of representation to convey truths, revealing the gaps between public perception and personal experience. Fallahpisheh moved to New York in 2014, and received an MFA in Photography from Bard College in 2016. He is a graduate of the Creative Practices Program in Photography at the ICP, New York. He has presented work at venues including Simone Subal, Kai Matsumaiya, Off Vendome, PAGE-NYC, ICP, and Callicoon Fine Arts, and in Tehran at TMOCA, Delgosha Gallery, Dastan Gallery and Maryam Harandi Gallery, among others.

Hadi Fallahpisheh is the recipient of the 2019 New York Artadia Award.