Negin Mahzoun | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1984 (age 40–41) |
| Known for | painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and textiles photography |
| Spouse | Tooraj Khamenehzadeh |
| Website | neginmahzoun.com |
Negin Mahzoun (born 1984, Tehran, Iran) is an Iranian artist based in New York. She works across painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and textiles, with a practice that explores themes of observation, memory, gender, and trauma. Mahzoun is a member of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York, where she maintains her studio. [1]
Mahzoun showed an early interest in drawing and received encouragement from her parents to pursue art. At the age of twelve, she lost her father and subsequently persuaded her mother to allow her to attend an art high school. She later described this period as formative, shaping her early commitment to artistic practice. She went on to study graphic design at the undergraduate level, where she developed an interest in illustration, particularly for children’s books and magazines.After graduation, Mahzoun worked as an illustrator for publishers and periodicals, but eventually moved away from the field due to the client-driven nature of the work. Her perspective on contemporary art broadened through her involvement with the artist-run Rybon Art Center [2] and later the Kooshk Residency in Tehran, where she gained exposure to international networks and collaborative practices. [1]
Mahzoun’s work is rooted in textiles and sewing, informed by her family background and her exploration of cultural and gendered identity. In recent projects, she has combined photography and textiles by printing self-portraits on fabric and stitching over the images until they fade. The act of piercing and covering through thread functions as both a material alteration and a metaphor for trauma, engaging ideas of erasure, concealment, and repair.Sewing in her practice extends beyond craft to serve as a language for addressing cultural and social trauma, particularly in relation to women’s bodies. It embodies a dual role as destructive and restorative, reflecting themes of vulnerability and resilience Her works also engage with historical representations of the body and women’s presence, embedding these references into textile-basedself-portraiture [3] where stitching operates as both a material process and a conceptual intervention. Through this layering, she reframes cultural heritage as an active medium, positioned as a living archive to be reinterpreted in the present. [1]
Mahzoun has participated in several international artist residencies. In 2022, she was awarded the Maltair Residency in Ebeltoft, Denmark, [21] organized with the Danish Art Workshop in Copenhagen and Kunsthal Aarhus. During the residency, she focused on material research and sculptural experimentation, testing methods for scaling works to large formats suitable for public or private spaces. In 2013, she participated in the Organhaus Residency in Chongqing, China, in collaboration with her spouse, Tooraj Khamenehzadeh. [22] The project addressed censorship and freedom of expression, inviting local artists to share personal reflections despite restrictions. Their words were translated into Persian and painted onto borrowed garments, which were exhibited and later returned to the artists, who wore them again in daily life as part of the project’s continuation. Alongside her artistic practice, Mahzoun contributed to the development of artist residencies and exchange programs in Iran. At the artist-run Rybon Art Center [2] and later at Kooshk Artist Residency in Tehran, she was involved in creating platforms that supported artists’ research, experimentation, and collaboration. She continues this trajectory as co-founder of Badiyeh Arts, [23] where she leads the Bisheh Project, [24] a correspondence-based initiative inviting artists and art professionals to exchange letters as a form of dialogue across distance.
