About the Artist
Roya Karimi is a visual artist, architecture graduate, writer, and translator based in Iran. Thanks to her eclectic background as a cultural/linguistic mediator in translating, and as an architecture consultant dealing with design, tectonics, and humans vs. the built environment, she is keenly interested in the converging values among various visual, semantic, and spatial systems, inspiring her to develop a mediatory approach across media, for instance, by examining the interchangeability between painterly and photographic qualities in her work. Her fascination with the Persian painting tradition of vertical hierarchies, color schemes, flattening of the visual realm, etc. has also significantly shaped her multilayered imagery. Her current work consists of making surrealistic still-lifes referencing shared historic-cultural, and personal narratives, and recreating them through painting, drawing, photography, cinemagraphs, and, recently, wearable sculptures.
When she is not busy working in her studio close to nature in a small town in Mazandaran province, Roya writes about art and collaborates with fellow artists in developing proposals and art projects. From 2016 to 2017, she joined an independent project to conduct a series of focused interviews online with visual artists around the world. These interviews were translated and published in Tandis, a prominent Iranian visual arts magazine. In 2018, she collaborated in founding a contemporary art center called SARAI Gallery in the ancient port town of Mahshahr in north-western Iran. She remained part of the gallery team until late 2023, discovering and promoting local talents beyond the borders. During this time, Roya was also one of the organizers of the annual art prize Khor Art Initiative.