Bahar Sabzevari Iranian, b. 1980

Bahar Sabzevari (b. 1980, Iran) is a visual artist based in New York and works internationally. She has a painting practice, exploring identity through self-portraiture, narrative painting and Drawing. Her career spans over 15 years and she has worked and studied in Iran, Europe and the US. By Integrating Persian motifs, religious details and characters into her self-portraits, she explores the concept of nostalgia and creates illusions of a lost age of persian glory. Her work explores the boundaries of human identity: self-identity, freedom, restriction, and sense of place and belonging. In particular, her work looks at transient and hidden forms of identity: the imagination, hopes, fears, dreams, histories and evolution. Sabzevari’s process is research and studio-based and involves the bringing together of complex imagery, symbols and narratives, often drawing from the fields of mythology, science, religion and art history in a humoristic way.