Crown of Flames is Haines Gallery's second solo exhibition with Iranian-American artist Shiva Ahmadi (b. 1975, Tehran; Bay Area-based), featuring new and recent watercolor paintings, sculptures, and a two-channel animation. Across all three bodies of work, Ahmadi fuses formal beauty with violence, drawing parallels between luminous imagery and global issues of war, resource extraction, and authoritarian power. Her newest watercolors center on defiant female figures inspired by the death of Mahsa Amini, while a new animated work serves as a contemporary parable about resource wars and greed.