Sara Niroobakhsh


Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Art and Technology Studies

Sara Niroobakhsh; born Nov 05, 1981, is an Iranian-born artist known for her performative and visual concepts that engage the globalizing feminine psyche. She was a professor at the University of Applied Science and Technology in Tehran and Jahad Daneshgahi in Karaj, Iran between 2008 and 2014. Niroobakhsh’s work, Saffron Diary, was awarded an Explore and Create Research and Creation Grant as a performance installation art project from Canada Council for the Arts in 2020 and received an art residency at the Goldfarb Study Centre Gallery at York University in 2019. In this work, she writes her diary with saffron ink on thousands of grains of rice which then covers the exhibition’s wall. Her recent performance-based series, Zaghareet, has been presented at the Czech China Contemporary Art Museum in Beijing, South Korea’s CICA Museum, Spartanburg Art Museum, and Frederick Horsman Varley Art Gallery in Canada and received a Visual Artists Creation Projects Grant from the Ontario Arts Council in 2018. In most of her projects, she references the notion of cultural objects through installations and performance layered with her own technology and science-based interventions. Niroobakhsh’s recent work highlights the human body in transition through life and death by promoting the healing process through performance and installation art using crystals. Her performance work: Tabalvour crystallizes her body inside a terracotta jar with a saturated solution containing saffron. She holds a BFA from the Shariaty Teacher Training College and an MA from Tehran University of Art. She is expected to complete her MFA in Art and Technology Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022.