Iran: Memory X Heartbeat
Ali Chitsaz, Mehdi Darvishi, Minoo Emami, Eugenie Flochel Jahanshahi,
Farzaneh Ghadyanloo, Farsad Labbauf, Tahmineh Monzavi, Dariush Nehdaran,
Azadeh Nia, Maryam Palizgir, Safarani Sisters, Mona Sartoveh, Atieh Sohrabi, and Ali Tahayori
Curated by Roya Khadjavi and the Safarani Sisters
November 6 - December 20, 2026
This exhibition brings together a group of Iranian artists living across geographies, whose practices emerge from a shared origin but unfold through distance, displacement, and time.
While physically separated from their country of birth, these artists remain connected to it through memory, language, and lived experiences, a constant struggle between the heart and the head. This ongoing conflict is what we feel inside every day. We are afraid to loose our roots and our authenticity and, therefore, go through a psychological battle within us to keep Iran as our heart beat and not to let her become a distant memory. The title of the exhibition, Iran: Memory X Heartbeat is a true reflection of this internal fight.
Image credit: Tahmineh Monzavi
About the Curators
Roya Khadjavi is a gallerist, independent curator and cultural producer based in New York City. Under Roya Khadjavi Projects, she has organized over 40 exhibitions since 2014 with over 60 artists and has participated in numerous art fairs internationally to promote the emerging and mid-career and established Iranian artists living in Iran and the diaspora. She has largely focused on the work of these artists, seeking not only to support their artistic endeavors but to also facilitate awareness and cultural dialogue between artistic communities by attending and participating in Conferences and panel discussions in the US and in Europe. Roya has been a collector and a patron of the arts for over 20 years. Since 2008, she has actively led exhibition committee efforts around the art of the Middle East for institutions including the Guggenheim Museum and the Asia Society, where she sat on the steering committee of the critically acclaimed exhibit Iran Modern in 2013. Khadjavi co-founded the Institute of International Education’s Iran Opportunities Fun in in 2009 where she has been active ever since fundraising for the cause as a committee member and as a donor herself. She served as a trustee and later president of the board of the acclaimed New York based non-profit Art in General from 2012-2020. Roya also served as a trustee at the prestigious School, The Lycée Francais de New York as Chair of the development committee and co-chair of the Strategic plan committee from 2002 to 2011. Prior to her support and promotion of Iranian art, Roya had a 20-year career in the Fashion Industry. The latest positions she held in that Industry were as the Vice President of Sales and marketing North America for the prestigious fashion company Yves Saint Laurent from 1994-2000 and as Vice President Divisional Merchandise Manager of Women’s Designer, Eveningwear and Bridge collection at the Department Store Lord and Taylor from 1990-1994. For her pioneering efforts to advance, support, and promote international education, she has been honored with the Women’s Global Leadership Award by the Institute of International Education and an Order of Academic Palms (Chevalier dans L’Ordre des Palmes Académiques) by the French Minister of Education.
Farzaneh and Bahareh Safarani
Alongside their artistic practice, the Safarani Sisters are actively engaged in curating occasional exhibitions, with a particular focus on Iranian artists and the diaspora. This curatorial direction emerged from reconnecting with their former classmates in Iran, inspiring them to create opportunities to showcase their peers’ work. What began as a personal initiative has since expanded into a broader platform supporting diverse voices across geographies. Farzaneh Safarani also collaborates closely with Roya Khadjavi Projects as an associate, contributing to curatorial development and exhibition programming.
About the Artists
Ali Chitsaz was born in Tehran, Iran in 1979. He has studied at the Azad University of Tehran and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has exhibited prolifically in solo and group exhibitions in London, Tehran, Isfahan, Dubai, Athens, Boston, Chicago, Paris and New York. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts at Lindenwood University.
Mehdi Darvishi is a multi-disciplinary artist that his practice spans from traditional printmaking and wooden sculptures to interactive paintings and site-specific installations. He was born in the summer of 1988, coinciding with the Iran – Iraq peace resolution. In his war-stricken hometown, Mehdi grew up unexposed to art galleries and museums. In 2007 he left home to earn a BFA in Painting at the University of Tehran. After receiving his degree in 2011, his interest in printmaking grew into a life's pursuit. He has since exhibited in over 30 countries and has participated in more than three hundred global exhibitions, competitions, residencies, and as a visiting artist. His works have been widely collected by museums such as the China Printmaking Museum, the Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Art, Jyvaskyla Museum of Fine Arts, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, and the US Library of Congress. He has served as a visiting artist at several renowned art institutions worldwide, including the New York Academy of Art, the University of British Columbia, the Katowice Academy of Art, and the University of Belgrade. He is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the City University of New York–College of Staten Island. His accolades include the Grand Prix of the 9th BIECTR, Second Place at the Premio Jesús Núñez, Special Award at the Premio Leonardo Sciascia, the Southern Graphics Conference Fellowship, and the Pritzker Fellowship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago among other honors. He was also nominated for the prestigious Prix Mario Avati from the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 2023. He currently lives and works in New York City, where he serves as a Master Printer at MGC Community Print Studio at Powerhouse Arts.
Minoo Emami is an Iranian multidisciplinary artist with over 25 years dedicated to art practice, teaching, and exhibition. She was a self-thought painter when she moved to the U.S. and began her formal art education at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in January 2015. She earned a BFA from Tufts University in May 2019. Minoo received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in May 2021. Minoo has given talks and presentations at universities and institutions in the U.S. and taught at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI. Minoo is the recipient of the SMFA Alumni Traveling Fellowship in 2023, the Hanse Sculpture Garden Grant by the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in 2020, and the SMFA Biot Award in painting in 2016. She is the Indigo Arts Alliance Mentorship Residency in Portland, MA, in 2024. Minoo’s artworks have been written about and exhibited in solo and group shows nationally and internationally. Her work has been collected privately and within the permanent collection of the Newport Art Museum, Newport, Rhode Island, USA, and at Lettre International in Berlin, Germany.
Eugenie Flochel (b. 1996) is a Paris-based artist with French & Persian roots working across photography and fine art. Her work is positioned in the field of socially-engaged art and experimental photography as she explores narratives of mental health and self-development. Her artistic practice is rooted in a hybrid, multidisciplinary approach shaped by her academic background in both political science and the arts, which she studied across the UK and the USA.
Her interests in mental health and art therapy crystallized as she teaches yoga and meditation as well as she facilitates therapeutic art workshops with vulnerable people at charities, in particular women survivors of domestic abuse and young people with disabilities.
Eugenie has pursued her social engagement and nurtured it through education : she now also teaches visual arts for Montessori and IB education and works as a prevention educator where she facilitates workshops to Middle & High School students on sexual, emotional and civic responsibility.
Farzaneh Ghadyanloo is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose work bridges the realms of photography, sculpture, film, and contemporary art. Based in both London and Tehran, her practice explores profound themes of self-discovery, growth, memory, identity, and consciousness, intricately weaving the subtle details of everyday life into reflective and thought-provoking narratives. Born in 1989, Ghadyanloo graduated from the Tehran University of Arts with a degree in Film Studies and recently completed her Master of Arts in Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art, London. Her strong foundation in photography serves as the backbone of her creative journey—a medium she continuously redefines and pushes beyond traditional boundaries to evoke deeper emotional and intellectual engagement. Her works have been showcased in solo and group exhibitions, including Celebration at Shirin Gallery in Tehran, Fragments of Her at Sholehabghari Gallery in Marbella, and Sonic Disruption at Tate Modern’s Tate Late event in London. Recognized for her innovative approach, she was a finalist for the prestigious Bloomberg New Contemporaries Art Prize 2024. Ghadyanloo's art invites viewers into an intimate exploration of personal and collective human experiences, reflecting her keen observational skills and dynamic engagement with her surroundings.
Farsad Labbauf is a multidisciplinary Iranian-born artist based in Jersey City, New Jersey. Shortly after immigrating to the United States in 1979, he enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts as well as a degree in Industrial Design. His work is shaped in part by theories in quantum physics, Monistic belief systems, and a sustained engagement with metaphysical inquiry. These foundations inform the distinct linearity of his figurative paintings, in which his worldview becomes a framework for exploring subjects that span the deeply personal—such as portraiture—to wider global themes including the charged terrains of politics, cultural imperialism and the shifting constructs of collective identity. Labbauf’s practice has been recognized internationally, with participation in more than sixty group exhibitions worldwide, including the Saatchi Gallery in London and the Ex Aurum Museum in Pescara, Italy. He has presented solo exhibitions in New York, Boston, Amsterdam, Tehran, and at the Esfahan Museum of Contemporary Art. His works are represented in prominent public and private collections including the Newark Museum of Art; the Salsali Museum and Afkhami Collections in Dubai; Saatchi Gallery in London; the Carsten de Boer Art Collection in Amsterdam; and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Esfahan. Labbauf is the recipient of the 2025 Individual Artist Fellowship Award from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts / Mid Atlantic Arts.
Born in 1988 in Tehran, Tahmineh Monzavi is a socially conscious photographer. She began her professional career as a documentary photographer in 2005. In her professional life, with a collection of photographs and her harmonious approach to her environment and her time, Tahmineh created her own style to capture and explore in the fields of artistic and documentary photography, with honesty and fearlessness. In 2007-2008 with the series guilty or innocent Tahmineh started to explore the ghettos of Tehran and the hidden from the public eye life of the transsexuals and homeless women. A taboo that challenges the established cultural norms. The harsh living conditions, drug abuse and prostitution are the basic facts that shape the daily reality of the small community. The combination of the grotesque and the normal shifts the preconceptions and prejudices and allows a chance for a social reconciliation. The series of photographs brides of mokhber al-dowleh of the same period explore a different subject, that of the ordinary life of the working-class community. Tahmineh portrays the bridal gown tailors in south Tehran; workers from deprived social classes whose poor work conditions testify to their meager livelihood. The juxtaposition between the beautiful white of the wedding dresses, the apotheosis of the traditional female dreams, and the rough hands of the working-class men doing the sewing and stitching Provokes feelings of wonder and contemplation.
Dariush Nehdaran, born in Isfahan /Iran in 1984, is a contemporary visual artist who fearlessly defies the rules in order to bring multiple and complex meanings to his work. Through rhythmic juxtaposed images containing a variety of perspectives, he constructs a world between dream and reality and plays with clarity and depth to suggest an alternative way of seeing things. Throughout his childhood, Dariush suffered from poor eyesight, but chose not to wear glasses to avoid the stigma of getting bullied. During that time, he experienced and viewed the world in a blurry and ambiguous way. When he became a teenager, the use of his grandfather's camera enabled him to see the world clearly for the first time in his life. The fact that he saw the world blurry though his own eyes and clear through the lens of the camera and the printed images has driven him to explore the subject of amphibology as the main topic in his work. By doing so, he has created a unique style that demands his viewers’ attention and focus as part of the resolution in his work. Nehdaran currently lives in San Francisco but has expanded his art internationally. His photographs and video works are available both in public and private collections worldwide including the Detroit Institute of Arts Museum (DIA) in the US 2023, the Armando Reverón Contemporary Art Museum in Caracas-Venezuela 2018, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in the US 2016, and the Salsali Private Museum in Dubai-UAE 2012. Dariush is the recipient of multiple awards including the Nikon International Photo Contest in Japan 2015, the Hamghadam Photo Festival in France 2010, and the 7th Image of the Year Festival in Tehran 2010.
Azadeh Nia (b.1988, Tehran, Iran) received an MFA from the University of The Arts London and a BA from University of Science & Culture in Tehran, Iran. Her work has been exhibited at Alexander Berggruen Gallery, Fridman Gallery, Plato Gallery, Hashimoto Contemporary and Wassaic Project in New York as well as Mill Contemporary and Gallery Fritz in Santa fe, NM. Nia was an artist in residence at Silver Art Projects in New York City in 2024-2025. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Maryam Palizgir is a multidisciplinary Iranian artist and educator whose work explores spatial perception, material manipulation, and the process of making. Blending drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and photography, she investigates how we experience and interpret the spaces we inhabit. Palizgir examines spatial perspectives in urban architecture as a means of identifying, predicting, and reimagining forms within interconnected environments shaped by human presence. For her, the act of making is as vital as the finished work; each process of deconstruction and reconstruction becomes an opportunity to question how perception is formed and how knowledge is exchanged.
As is well-evidenced in her ongoing art practice, Palizgir is invested in the history of painting and photography. Her scenes recall a continuity of artists throughout history who have tackled nature as subject matter and human fragility. These crafted scenes defy the assumed order of ecosystems and unfold as spaces of discovery, where perception and imagination converge.
Working with industrial and reflective materials such as fiberglass mesh, acrylic, and light, Palizgir creates layered sculptural installations that evoke dimensional transitions, ephemerality, and change. Her works invite viewers to look into and through space, activating the artwork through perception.
Palizgir received her MFA from Georgia State University. She has exhibited in solo and group shows across the United States, Iran, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and Germany. Her work has been featured in numerous publications, and Global Voices has interviewed her about the intersections of globalization, identity, and culture in contemporary art. Through installation, drawing, photography, and sculptural painting, Palizgir captures the tensions between tradition and contemporaneity, reality and aspiration, individuality and community, authority and freedom, creating works that invite participation and contemplation.
Safarani Sisters (Iranian, b. 1990) began painting at the age of thirteen, they collaborate on their artwork together. They earned their B.A. in painting from Tehran University and M.F.A from Northeastern University, in Boston, Massachusetts. Currently working and residing in Massachusetts, over the past few years the Safarani sisters took on a journey in incorporating video and performance art into their passion for painting. Their pioneering video-paintings and performances have been acclaimed as thought provoking and transformative artistic contributions that weave together loose but striking narratives. Safarani Sisters have participated in numerous Solo and Group exhibitions, including “Projecting Her”, Adelson Galleries Boston 2016, “Reincarnation”, 2018 and “Sprinkle of Light”, 2021 with Roya Khadjavi Projects, New York, “Preview Exhibition” in Adelson Galleries, Palm Beach, Florida, “Body Double”, Morris Museum New Jersey, ‘’Strange States’’ a group exhibition in Shelburne Museum, Vermont. Their works can be found in numerous museums and private collections, including Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Massachusetts. Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. Morris Museum, Morris town, New Jersey, Tank Shanghai, China, Accor Headquarters, Paris, France.
Mona Sartoveh is an Iranian photographer based in Boston whose work explores memory, loss, belonging, and identity. Working across documentary, conceptual, and fine art photography, she creates images that examine the emotional traces of personal and collective experience. Alongside her photographic practice, Sartoveh also works as a co-writer in independent cinema, an experience that has deepened her interest in narrative, silence, and the psychological dimensions of image-making. Influenced by experiences of love, grief, migration, and motherhood, Sartoveh approaches photography as a way of understanding rather than documenting the world. Her work is drawn to what remains unspoken—to the spaces between presence and absence, remembering and forgetting, and the fragile ways people carry their histories within them. Through long-term projects, she explores how memory shapes identity and how photographs can preserve not only moments, but emotional experience. Sartoveh's work has been exhibited internationally in the United States, Europe, and North Africa, and has been recognized through exhibitions and awards including the International Photography Awards (IPA), Prix de la Photographie Paris (PX3), and the Tokyo International Foto Awards (TIFA). Her photographs invite quiet reflection, offering spaces where personal stories resonate beyond their individual experience and speak to broader questions of memory, displacement, and human connection.
Atieh Sohrabi was born (1976) and raised in Tehran, and currently living in New York City, freelance Illustrator and Artist, Atieh Sohrabi, started her career in 2001 by choosing Industrial Design as her major in Azad Art University. As she became more familiar with the art world, she decided to switch to a new path in illustrations. She moved from Tehran to New York in 2015. Atieh's books have been selected by different exhibitions and museums around the world; for instance, Biennale of Illustrations Bratislava, Biennale of Illustration Golden Pen Belgrade, 24th BIB Exhibition in Hiratsuka Art Museum, Kawara Museum of Takahama City Chiba City Museum of Art, Ashikaga Museum of Art, Urawa Art Museum in Japan, The Tehran International Biennale Illustration, and LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum). In 2020, her paintings were curated by Roya khadjavi in two group shows which were held in Highline gallery, New York, and five pieces of the show were selected by Communication Arts Magazine, and she achieved the 2022 Award of Excellence. She was selected by Meta Platforms, Inc (IG&FB) as a Persian artist to create stickers for celebrating Nowruz (Persian new year) in 2022. One of her pieces is included in the “Women Defining Women in Contemporary Art of the Middle East and Beyond” Group show, curated by Linda Komaroff in LACMA museum in 2023.
Born in Shiraz, Iran, Ali Tahayori currently lives and works in Sydney, Australia. Raised in the oppressively homophobic climate of 1980s Iran, Tahayori assumed the identity of an outsider, further compounded by his migration to Australia in 2007. He holds a Doctorate in Medicine and MFA in Photo media from Sydney's National Art School. Tahayori's interdisciplinary practice ranges from conceptual photography to the moving image and installation. Tahayori uses archival materials, narrative fragments and performative modalities to explore themes of identity, home, and belonging. He has participated in multiple solo and group exhibitions in Australia, the Middle East and Europe. His work has been exhibited at Sharjah Art Foundation (November 2022), Photo London (May 2023), SPRING1883 Melbourne (August 2023), and Unseen Amsterdam Photography Fair (September 2023). He has been a finalist and winner of several local and international art prizes, including the Prix Yves Hernot Award, Smith and Singer People's Choice Award for Bowness Photography Prize, highly commended award for Gosford Art Prize and finalist in Vantage Point Sharjah, Waverley, Hornsby, Blacktown and Hazelhurst Art on Paper awards. His work has been featured and written about in Guardian Australia (Sept 2021), Art Review (April 2023), the 100th edition of Photo London Magazine (May 2023), Art Collector Magazine (July 2023), and Sydney Morning Herald (November 2022).