Artist: Shabnam Miri

Exhibition Title: TBD

Exhibtion Dates: April 12-16, 2027

Reception and Gallery Talk: TBD

Bio:

Shabnam Miri is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose practice spans painting, drawing, textile, and installation. Her work explores human relationships, everyday life, and the quiet stories embedded in ordinary moments, often through a feminist and introspective lens.

Combining observation and imagination, Miri creates visual narratives that weave together memory, emotion, and social connection. Through layered surfaces, expressive gestures, and tactile materials, she reflects on identity and the complex intersections between personal and collective experience. Her work frequently draws inspiration from literature, personal encounters, and the subtle poetics of daily life.

Born in Tehran, Iran (1993), Miri holds a BFA and MA in Painting from the University of Art, Tehran, and is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of South Carolina. She is also the founder and art director of Miri Art Institute in Iran, where she has been engaged in teaching, curating, and developing educational art programs. Through both her artistic and pedagogical practices, Miri continues to investigate how stories, individual and shared, can be translated into visual and material form. Her work has been featured in both solo and group exhibitions in Iran and internationally.

Artist Statement:

My practice centers on human relationships, emotions, and the everyday moments that reveal the texture of life. As a subtheme, my work explores questions of identity, gender, and the roles of women in contemporary society, situating these concerns within ordinary settings. Ultimately, my practice seeks to render visible the fleeting, layered moments of human life, creating experiences that resonate both personally and collectively. Storytelling is fundamental to my work. I seek to capture fleeting connections, friendships, and intimate interactions. Friends and family often appear, serving as both personal anchors and lenses through which broader social and emotional experiences are explored.

Across media, I embrace experimentation, spontaneity, and narrative inquiry, treating art as a space for exploration and reflection. I approach painting and installation with spontaneity, often beginning without a fixed plan and allowing sketches, photographs, and intuitive gestures to guide the process. Objects and interior spaces are as significant as figures, highlighting the ordinariness of life while emphasizing relational dynamics. Color, gaze, and composition work together to evoke emotional depth and invite viewer engagement.

In conversation with the paintings are textile-based installations using tulle fabric. Its transparency reflects qualities I associate with friendship, such as openness and trust, while allowing multiple layers of stitching to coexist and create spatial complexity. The resulting box-like “shells” are immersive environments, enabling viewers to enter, move through, and engage with memories and emotions in a tactile and participatory way. The idea for the tulle box “shell” comes from a traditional protective structure in my culture, used for resting outdoors during warm seasons. I reinterpreted its form as a safe home that holds and protects my personal memories, with the inner panels narrating fragments of my experiences.