ABOUT

Mehrana Nazari is an Iranian-Canadian visual artist specializing in photography, with a strong engagement in art history. Her photographic practice explores personal narrative, identity, and emotion, using self-portraiture and constructed imagery as tools for expression. Through her work, she examines inner states, feelings of displacement, memory, and psychological tension, creating images that are deeply personal while resonating with broader human experiences.

Alongside her artistic practice, Mehrana’s research focuses on how art reflects and shapes power, ideology, and cultural values. She is particularly interested in painting, photography, and architecture, with a focus on Early Modern European art and architecture as well as Islamic art and architecture. Her work critically engages with the ways art history has historically privileged certain geographies while marginalizing others, including West Asian, Middle Eastern, and Islamic visual cultures.

Mehrana is especially drawn to cross-cultural approaches, examining how artists and societies negotiate meaning, identity, and representation within political, religious, and colonial contexts. Her recent work is increasingly informed by contemporary political realities, particularly in relation to Iran and the Iranian diaspora, where questions of distance, belonging, and representation become both personal and urgent.

By bringing together creative practice and critical research, Mehrana creates a dialogue between personal experience and historical inquiry. Through both photography and writing, she explores the emotional and structural conditions that shape how we understand art, identity, and place.