Posted on 5 February 2026:
Iranian Women Artists Illuminate Memory and Resilience at India Art Fair 2026
At the India Art Fair 2026, Vida Heydari Contemporary unveils a powerful all-female showcase featuring renowned Iranian artists Katayoun Karami, Maryam Firuzi, Niloofar Rahnama, and Roghayeh Najdi. Hosted at the NSIC Exhibition Ground, Okhla, New Delhi, from 5–8 February 2026, the presentation bridges photography and painting to foreground contemporary Iranian women’s voices—voices that resonate with memory, resilience, gender and lived experience.
Katayoun Karami’s intimate photography and installations delve into identity and the emotional body, where fragmented figures and tactile surfaces embody vulnerability yet radiate endurance. Maryam Firuzi blurs the boundary between fiction and documentary, her lens shaped by upheaval, migration, and the pandemic. Through ruins as metaphor, she transforms collective pain into spaces of healing and collaboration.
In contrast, Niloofar Rahnama turns to the quiet interiors of domestic life. Her paintings, marked by time and use, reclaim psychological space through subtle shifts in form and color, offering meditations on memory and feminine presence. Roghayeh Najdi, rooted in the artistic heritage of Tabriz, confronts gendered power structures with symbolic compositions. Her spectral female figures entwined with lush, oversized flora become metaphors of endurance, solidarity, and renewal.
Together, these artists weave a layered reflection on contemporary Iranian experience. Their works transcend geography, creating a dialogue that underscores art’s capacity to hold memory, resilience and possibility.
This exhibition is not merely a presentation—it is a testament to the strength of women’s voices in shaping cultural narratives across borders.
Voices of Resilience — Iranian Women Artists at the Forefront
Katayoun Karami, born in Tehran in 1967, stands as a voice of memory and identity in contemporary art. Trained in architecture in Ankara, she carries into her practice a profound sensitivity to space and form, weaving these elements into photography, installation, and mixed media. Her work becomes a lens through which the representation of women, history, and politics converge, opening quiet yet powerful spaces for reflection on resilience and fragility within human bonds.
Since the 1990s, Karami’s art has traveled across borders—from Tehran and Tabriz to Amsterdam, Dubai, and Pune—each exhibition a dialogue between lived realities and collective narratives. Landmark presentations such as Amnesia and Hypermnesia (Tehran, 2020), Speaking from the Heart (Amsterdam, 2013), and POSTFORM (Pune, 2022) reveal her commitment to experimental, socially engaged expression. Honored with the Ibda’a Award in Dubai in 2002, she continues to shape conversations around gender and memory, living and working in Tehran, where her art remains both rooted and resonant.
Maryam Firuzi, born in Shiraz in 1986, is a photographer and filmmaker whose art becomes a mirror of self-reflection and cultural dialogue. Educated in cinema and film studies in Tehran, she channels her deepest emotions into visual narratives that confront identity, gender and the crises of contemporary culture. For Firuzi, Iran itself is a threshold—between East and West, tradition and modernity—where art becomes the language to navigate these intersections.
Her works, imbued with sensitivity and courage, have resonated across continents, from France and Austria to South Korea, Zurich, and the United States. Twice honored with the Peace Medal of the Global Peace Photo Award (2018, 2022) and laureate of the IWPA Award in 2022, she continues to shape conversations on resilience and belonging. With her latest series exhibited at the Albert Kahn, Firuzi affirms her place as an artist whose vision bridges personal memory with collective history, living and working in Tehran where her practice remains both rooted and universal.
Niloofar Rahnama, born in Tehran in 1975, is a visual artist whose practice moves gracefully between painting and installation. With a BFA and MFA in Painting from Azad University of Art, she has, for more than two decades, carried her work across continents—from Tehran and Paris to exhibitions throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States.
Her art is deeply personal, shaped by experiences of instability, war, loss, motherhood, and memory. Through a layered process of covering, revealing, and erasing, Rahnama creates a dialogue between presence and absence, allowing her canvases to breathe with movement and emotional resonance. Beyond the studio, she extends her vision into teaching and children’s book illustration, weaving storytelling into her creative journey. Living and working in Tehran, Rahnama continues to transform fragility into form, offering works that echo both intimacy and universality.
Roghayeh Najdi, born in Tabriz in 1982, is an artist whose practice draws deeply from the lived realities of Iranian women and the cultural memory of her homeland. Trained in traditional painting at Tabriz University and later in Art Research at Antwerp University, she crafts works that inhabit a surreal, psychological terrain where absence and presence are held in fragile balance. Her figures—often ghostly, de-identified women—become haunting symbols of erasure, reflecting the suppression of female identity within patriarchal structures.
Roghayeh Najdi’s exhibitions trace a journey across Tehran, Antwerp, Paris, Dubai, Los Angeles, and her native Tabriz, each show a meditation on silence, memory, and resilience. From Crossing the Shadows (Tehran, 2024) to Traces of Silence (Antwerp, 2022), and I AM NOT WHAT YOU SEE OF ME (Paris, 2024), her works resonate as both intimate confessions and collective testimony. Living and practicing in Tabriz, Najdi continues to shape a visual language that confronts invisibility, transforming absence into presence through art that is at once delicate and defiant.
Vida Heydari Contemporary stands as a vibrant gateway to South Asia’s cultural heartbeat, weaving together galleries, institutions and artists into a shared tapestry of dialogue and discovery.
Its collaborative spirit not only celebrates the region’s modern and contemporary voices but also nurtures global engagement, affirming art as a living bridge between heritage and innovation.
