Mehrana Nazari is an Iranian-Canadian visual artist specializing in photography and passionate about art history. Her photographic work explores personal narrative, identity, and emotion, using self-portraiture and self-representation as tools for communication and expression. Through her images, she examines her inner feelings, struggles, and thoughts, creating work that is deeply personal yet resonates with broader human experiences.
Alongside her artistic practice, Mehrana’s research interests focus on how art reflects and shapes power, ideology, and cultural values. She is particularly drawn to painting, photography, and architecture, with an interest in Early Modern art and architecture as well as Islamic Art and Architecture. Her research critically examines how art history has historically privileged certain geographies while marginalizing others, including West Asian, Middle Eastern, and Islamic art. Mehrana is especially interested in cross-cultural approaches to visual culture, exploring how artists and societies negotiate meaning, identity, and representation within political, religious, and colonial contexts.
By combining creative practice with critical research, Mehrana fosters a dialogue between personal expression and historical inquiry, using both photography and research to explore the stories and structures that shape our understanding of art and identity.
Education:
OCAD University - Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography 2023-present
Centennial College—post-diploma in photography 2021-2023
Exhibitions:
- Stories of Home – April 2024
Group Show at The Ada Slaight Gallery, Toronto, ON
- Fleshly Desires – July 2024 – August 2024
Student group gallery show at OCAD University, associated with OCAD University
- Oscillations - April 2025
Group show at the Ada Slaight Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
It’s HOPE, Gallery 1313, Toronto, ON — Group Exhibition
September 3–14, 2025
Stories of Home. Group Show. The Ada Slaight Gallery