
Exhibiting Artist Biographies
A self-taught artist, Afsoon spent her childhood in Iran and youth in California before settling in London in 1988. Working across mediums including watercolor photography, linocut, collage and etching, the artist’s dynamic practice lends itself to her gift of storytelling. Afsoon has exhibited internationally, and her works are held in the collections of LACMA, the British Museum, the Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent Collection, and the Farjam Collection amongst others.
Pouya Afshar is an alumnus of the California Institute of Arts and a graduate of the University of California Los Angeles Graduate Department of Film and Television, focusing on Animation and Digital Media. He has exhibited his work as a visual artist throughout the United States and the Middle East, including the Harold M. Williams Auditorium at the Getty Center, Bovard Auditorium at the University of Southern California, Royce Hall at the University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Santa Monica Art Studios, 18th street Art Center, Craft Contemporary Museum. His works are in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Denver Art Museum.
Mohammad Barrangi was born in Rasht, Iran, in 1988. Now based in the UK, he is both a globally recognized artist and a medal-winning athlete who has represented Iran internationally in the 100m sprint. Born without full mobility in his left arm, Barrangi has developed a unique artistic practice that utilizes his right hand and both feet to create his distinctive works. Blending traditional calligraphy with experimental mark-making techniques, Barrangi combines elements of Persian calligraphy, storytelling, text, and touches of humor to create intimate works on handmade paper that are selectively expanded into large-scale murals. Barrangi holds a degree in graphic design from the Islamic Azad University of Tonekabon and recently graduated from the Royal Drawing School in London. Barrangi has extensively exhibited his work around the world, winning numerous awards and recognition that has led to the prolific publication of his illustrations in a variety of books. His works have been acquired by the permanent collections of the British Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Royal Family Collection, the National Government Collection in the UK, the San Diego Museum of Art in the USA, the Cluj-Napoka Art Museum, Romania as well as Leeds Art Gallery, UK.
Kourosh Beigpour is an LA-based, award-winning artist and type designer. He received his BFA in 2003 from the Tehran University of Art and an MFA in International Contemporary Art and Design from Limkokwing University in 2011. Beigpour also completed a postgraduate in Type Design at TypeWest in San Francisco. His use of typography and graphic design has been published in more than twenty countries around the globe. Beigpour has designed for a wide range of clientele, including Google, The Broad, The J. Paul Getty Museum, University of California Irvine, University of California Los Angeles, Northeastern Illinois University, Oklahoma State University, Canada Type, Powerhouse Museum, DoppelHouse Press, and The Samuel Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture. Six works from Beigpour’s Mandal series were acquired by LACMA for their permanent collection in 2023 and exhibited in San Diego Museum of Art’s exhibition Wonders of Creation, curated by Ladan Akbarnia, in 2024.
Over several decades, Iranian born, Oakland-based multimedia artist Ali Dadgar has explored universal themes of censorship, colonization, ‘otherness’, and identity filtered through his own Iranian and American experiences. Working across multiple mediums and series simultaneously, Dadgar’s ideas take shape through performance and 2-dimensional mixed media art. Dadgar (b. 1962) received his BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, in 1989 followed by an MFA in Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007. His work has been placed in prominent private and public collections, including the University of California Berkeley Morrison Library.
Amir H. Fallah
Amir H. Fallah, born in 1979 in Tehran, received his BFA in Fine Art & Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art and his MFA in painting at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions across the United States and abroad. Selected solo exhibitions include the Fowler Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson, AZ; South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings SD; Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland OR; San Diego ICA; and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland KS. Fallah was the founder and creative director of art & design publication Beautiful/Decay from 1996-2013. In 2009, he was chosen to participate in the 9th Sharjah Biennial. In 2015, Fallah received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. In 2019, Fallah’s painting Calling On The Past received the Northern Trust Purchase Prize at EXPO Chicago. In 2020, he was awarded the COLA Individual Artist Fellowship and the Artadia grant. In addition, the artist had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, accompanied by a catalogue, and a year-long installation at the ICA San Jose. The artist is in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; de Young Museum, San Francisco; Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Miami; Deste Foundation For Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; McEvoy Foundation For The Arts, San Francisco; Nerman Museum, Kansas City; SMART Museum of Art at the University of Chicago; Davis Museum, Massachusetts; The Microsoft Collection, Washington; Plattsburg State Art Museum, New York; Cerritos College Public Art Collection, California; Los Angeles County Department of Arts & Culture; Schneider Museum of Art, Oregon; Crocker Art Museum, California; Pitzer College Permanent Collection, California; Lonsford Collection at Purdue University, Indiana; Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College, North Carolina; Miguel Angel Capriles Collection, Caracas,Venezuela; Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, Florida; and Salsali Private Museum, Dubai, UAE. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles.
Roya Farassat
Roya Farassat is an Iranian American visual artist living in New York. Her abstract and figurative work includes drawings, paintings, and sculptures. She received her BFA from Parsons School of Design and has been widely exhibited at galleries and museums in the United States and abroad. Farassat was nominated for The Victoria and Albert Jameel Prize, The MOP Foundation Contemporary Art Prize and awarded residencies from Henry Street Settlement and The Makor/Steinhardt Center. Her work has been reviewed by The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Brooklyn Rail, The Boston Globe, Art Critical, Art Radar, Hyperallergic, W Magazine, and Flaunt Magazine
Asad Faulwell
Asad Faulwell is a California based artist whose work has been shown at The Nelson-Atkins Museum, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, OCMA and LACMA among others. His work is included in numerous private collections as well as the permanent collections of The Long Museum, The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, OCMA, The Columbus Museum of Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum, The Wellin Museum of Art and LACMA.
Mokarrameh Ghanbari
Born in Iran in 1928, Mokarrameh Ghanbari was a self-taught artist who began painting at the age of 61. She quickly produced a prolific body of work with a distinct visual language, even painting on the walls of her home when she ran out of paper. Mokarrameh became a defining artist of the Folk Art movement in Iran, and had her first exhibition at Seyhon Gallery, Tehran in 1995. Before her passing in 2005, the artist participated in ten other exhibitions and was awarded the jury prize at the Roshd Film Festival. In 2001, she was awarded “Woman of the Year” at the 12th International Conference of Iranian Women’s Studies Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. In addition, she was named the “Female Painter of 2001” by the Swedish National Museum.
Living and working in German exile since the 1990s, themes like the violation of Human Rights and the oppression of women are of major concern for the artist and activist Parastou Forouhar, who employs a powerful feminist language in her art. Her work blurs the boundaries between form and concept, biography and artistry. With artistic techniques such as installation, graphic print or performative photography, Fourouhar engages with the positionality of the female body, and how diversity and ambivalence shape the meaning and ownership of the space in relation to gender, ethnicity and migration. Her work has been widely exhibited around the world and is included in prestigious permanent collections, including The Queensland Art Museum, the British Museum, Belvedere in Vienna, the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt, the Deutsche Bank Art Collection and the Walker Art Center.
Born in Tehran, Iran in 1943, and now based in New York, Nahid Hagigat is a pioneering artist whose work bridges Iranian and Western art. After graduating in Fine Arts from Tehran University, Hagigat pursued a Ph. D. from New York University in the early 1970s. Still, she often exhibited her etchings and photo etchings in Tehran and was instrumental in introducing printmaking to the Iranian art scene. In 2013, Hagigat was included in the seminal show Iran Modern at the Asia Society in New York and recently in LACMA’s Women Defining Women In Contemporary Art of the Middle East and Beyond, in 2023. Her work is in numerous permanent collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The British Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, JP Morgan-Chase, New York University, and World Bank in Washington, D.C. Her solo exhibition, Etched in Time, is currently on view at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, in San Francisco thru March 23, 2025.
Marjan Hormozi
Marjan Hormozi was born to an Iranian family in Tehran. Her father and uncle were in the advertising industry and in her early life she grew up in a very busy household that was like an around-the-clock ad agency. This very free and creative environment gave Marjan her initial love and passion for making art and storytelling. Marjan received her MFA from Slade School of Fine Arts, London. Her solo and group shows include, PØST, Track 16 gallery, Los Angeles, Crucial Gallery, London, the Royal Academy of Art, London, Torrance Museum of Art and LACE, Los Angeles. She is the recipient of several awards and fellowships including the Cheltenham fellowship (UK), Artist in Residence at the Stroud Museum (UK) and Artist in Residence at the University of North London (UK). Her work has appeared in various print and broadcast media including L.A. Weekly, KCRW, Ritz magazine UK, Studio International UK, BBC UK and is included in international private collections. Marjan Hormozi is the Area Head for Drawing Studio at Otis College of Art And Design and teaches Drawing and Painting at CalArts.
Tahmineh Javanbakht
Born in Iran and growing up in Isfahan until age 16, Tahmineh Javanbakht is a Los Angeles based multi-disciplinary artist who dedicates her art to the exploration of identity, memory, and cultural heritage. Javanbakht is the co-founder of Artecnica, a Los Angeles-based design firm whose designs have been included in collections at the Museum of Modern Art NY, LACMA, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Jahanbakht has taught experimental painting at her alma mater, the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.
Simin Keramati is an Iranian-Canadian multidisciplinary artist based in Canada. Her practice spans photography, film, mixed media, drawing, and painting, often exploring themes of identity, the diasporic experience, women’s rights, and gender equality. Keramati resists the conventional frameworks imposed by curators and gallerists, challenging boundaries in her work. She received the Grand Prize at the Dhaka International Biennial in 2003, was shortlisted for the MOPCAP Prize in 2009, and has been awarded multiple grants from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Farshid Mesghali
Hailing from the artistic heart of Iran, Mesghali- born in Isfahan in 1943- embarked on a journey through the spectrum of artistry. After studying painting at Tehran University, he ventured into graphic design and illustration in 1964. In 1968, Mesghali’s path led him to the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults in Tehran, where his creative prowess flourished. The 1970s saw him crafting award-winning animated films, evocative film posters, and enchanting children’s book illustrations. His indelible mark on children’s literature earned him the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1974. A new chapter unfolded in 1979 when he moved to Paris, creating an array of captivating paintings and sculptures showcased at the Sammy King Gallery. In 1986, he set up his graphic design studio, Desktop Studio, in Southern California, USA. From 1990 to 1994, Mesghali’s digital artworks, born from snapshot photos, graced galleries and the L.A. County Museum of Modern Arts. Today, this esteemed artist continues to breathe life into paintings, sculptures, and immersive installations from his studio, carrying forward a legacy of creativity and vision. He is based in Iran.
Dana Nehdaran
Born in 1982, Dana Nehdaran studied painting at Soureh Art University in Shiraz, Iran, after having studied carpet design in Isfahan, the rug capital of the world. Esther’s Children, his exhibition of paintings based on late-nineteenth-century images of Iranian Jews, was shown in 2011 at Shirin Art Gallery in Tehran and in 2013 at Rira Gallery in Dubai. A reflection on the photographs of EJ. Bellocq’s Storyville portraits, A Preservation of Light, was exhibited at Spillman/Blackwell Fine Art in New Orleans in 2023. Nehdaran’s work has also been included in exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Paris, Monaco, and Toronto, and featured in Artes Magazine, Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art, The Huffington Post, LA Weekly, The New York Times, and ArtDaily. A member of the Iranian Painter Association since 2007, he lives and works in New York.
Brooklyn-based artist Nicky Nodjoumi was born in Kermanshah, Iran in 1942 and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Art from Tehran University of Fine Arts. Nodjoumi relocated to the United States in the late 1960s, where he received his Master’s degree in Fine Arts from The City College of New York in 1974. Returning to Tehran to join the faculty of his alma mater, Nodjoumi continued the journey of political engagement that has been foundational to his work across decades. Nodjoumi’s works are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the British Museum in London, Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi, the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, and the National Museum of Cuba. Nicky Nodjoumi’s solo exhibition, Nicky Nodjoumi: The Personal is Political is currently on exhibition at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center (YBCA) through March 23 2025. Nodjoumi lives and works in Brooklyn.
Born in Esfahan, Iran, Mobina Nouri currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Mobina Nouri is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice reflects her personal history as a female immigrant who left Iran to live in the UK and later the US. Working across a variety of media, the artist mines her country’s tradition of storytelling, often turning to Persia’s literature, philosophies, and mysticism to contemplate and reconsider the complexities she bears witness to in the contemporary moment. Nouri received her BA in Performance Art and MA in Product Design from the Fine Art Faculty of Tehran University, Iran, and her Ph.D. in Creativity Science from City University London, UK. Nouri has exhibited her work internationally. Many of her artworks have been acquired by prominent private collections across the globe. Recently, a piece from her Poetography series was exhibited in San Francisco’s de Young Museum, as well as featured in local and international publications. Nouri received the 2020 MOZAIK Future Art Award, the 2020 Juror’s Choice in the “Art Saves Humanity” Competition curated by a panel of renowned art world advocates & entrepreneurs, including Jerry Saltz, as well as the 2019 Juror’s choice award at the San Francisco Women Artists Gallery. She was a selected juror for MOZAIK Future Art’s “Re-Imagining Democracy” exhibition in 2021 and was selected to be an artist in residence at Djerassi for their 2022 program in the Bay area.
Zartosht Rahimi
Portrait as one of the forms of painting appears in an iconic way in Rahimi’s artworks. It means that he chooses specific characters, draws extra attention to their role, and clarifies his focus on key people by drawing their portraits. Characters such as clerics prominent political figures, writers, artists and pop singers can be identified among them. This interest in both elite culturists and prominent intellectuals1 as well as influential artists and popular figures evokes a kind of class journey in the mind which reveals the artists attempt for deeper search on social and cultural issues.
Bahar Sabzevari
Bahar Sabzevari (b. 1980, Iran) is a Brooklyn-based visual artist whose work reflects a deep exploration of identity, freedom, and belonging. Through her paintings, Sabzevari creates richly layered narratives that examine the human condition, weaving personal experiences with universal themes. Her art draws inspiration from mythology, Persian miniatures, natural history, and cultural symbolism, blending these elements with contemporary ideas. Each piece reflects her fascination with storytelling, combining humor, critique, and introspection to address societal and environmental concerns. She has exhibited her work internationally, earning recognition through awards from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation and residencies at Civitella Ranieri in Italy and The Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.
Hadi Salehi is a master of the art of analog photography. Salehi’s images capture diverse portraits that are powerful and soft, leaving a haunting quality that lingers in the psyche. Salehi seeks to create a collective awareness as a cultural messenger through his images, revealing quiet truths through his process-intensive works. With a career that spans more than 40 years, Salehi has closely documented cultural innovators such as Keith Haring, as well as developed an expansive body of analog, digital, film, and mixed media works. Hadi Salehi is a graduate of Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, and currently resides in Los Angeles. Hadi’s work is in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Arts (LACMA) and exhibited in USC Fischer Museum of Art in Art And Hope at The End of The Tunnel, in 2021, curated by Edward Goldman.
Sepideh Salehi is a multidisciplinary artist born in Tehran. She left Iran to attend Accademia di belle Arti in Florence Italy where she received her MFA in Visual Art and Multimedia. She works in various media and utilizes different processes ranging from painting and drawing to printmaking, photography, video art, and painting in motion. By incorporating aspects of storytelling and letter writing, Salehi recollects the experiences she had growing up in post-1979 Tehran. She weaves personal narrative and cultural history into her work, reflecting on the ways in which she, and other women, navigated the shifting social and political landscapes. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at, Zona Maco, Mexico City, Southampton Art fair, New York, MIA photo Fair Milan, Intrecci, Galleria Anna Mara in Rome, an exhibition of Iranian women artists titled A Bridge Between You and Everything curated by Shirin Neshat at High Line Nine, NYC, Photo London, Somerset House London, Mirrored Re-Collection at the University of Maryland, REVEAL at The Space by Advocartsy LA, Patterning curated by Samantha Friedman at Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY, STRAPPA Rogue Space Chelsea NY, Craft, and Folk Art Museum LA, Tribeca Video Art NY, Centre for Contemporary Art Luigi Pecci, Virgiliano Museum and International Bologna Art Fair Italy. Salehi has been on a panel discussion with Shirin Neshat, Middle East Institute, and had talks at the University of Maryland, Loyola University, Pyramid Atlantic Center, and others. She currently lives and works between Washington DC and New York.
Delbar Shahbaz received her MFA from Art University in Tehran, Iran in 2008. She went on to pursue a career as a professional artist and educator before migrating to the USA in 2013, where she earned her second MFA from the Art Center College of Design. Of central concern to her practice is the negotiation of gender identity, transformation, and emancipation as well as human connection to the natural realm. Shahbaz engages with self-identity as fluid, socially constructed, and multifaceted. She responds to her own experiences as a female migrant yet connects her subjectivity to the universal subject matter. Shahbaz has worked as a part-time faculty member at Art Center College of Design since 2016, and her works have been exhibited as a solo artist and in group shows internationally.
Foroozan Shirghani (b. Iran, 1981), is a multidisciplinary artist who received her BFA from Tehran Azad Art University in 2004 and her MFA from Alzahra University in 2008. She served as a lecturer and art instructor at the Share Rey Azad university and Shariati University in Tehran between 2008 to 2015. Shirghani works across mediums, including painting, drawing, ceramic sculptures, abstract video, and textiles. Her work has been featured in over sixty exhibitions worldwide and featured in numerous publications.
Alireza Shojaian
Alireza Shojaian is an Iranian artist, born in Tehran in 1988. He began his career in Tehran and Beirut and has been based in Paris since 2019. His work aims to challenge societal prejudices against non-heteronormative masculine identities.
Shadi Yousefian is an artist whose mixed media work reflects and addresses issues that touch on universal themes such as loss, dislocation, alienation, and reinvention. She received both her Bachelor’s (2003) and Master’s (2006) of Fine Arts in photography from San Francisco State University. Her work engages personal and social issues of contemporary life, particularly cultural identity and the immigrant experience. Shadi has been the recipient of several awards including the Best of Photography Award at the 13th Annual Stillwell Show, The International Photo Awards (IPA 2004 and 2005), The Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship in the Fine Arts, and the International Photography Competition (Latitude Life). Her work has also been acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the San Diego Museum of Art.