Sanaz Mazinani

Sanaz Mazinani (born 1978) is an Iranian–born Canadian multidisciplinary visual artist, curator, and educator, known for her photography and installation art. She is currently based in Toronto, Canada.

Mazinani was born in Tehran, Iran in 1978, one year prior to the Iranian Revolution.^[1][2] Her brother is artist Mani Mazinani.^[3][4] She immigrated to Canada at the age of 11.^[1] While in Canada, Mazinani studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design (currently known as OCAD University), where she graduated in 2003. She later moved to the United States in 2009. She received her Master of Fine Arts at Stanford University in 2011.^[5]

Throughout her practice, Sanaz Mazinani has produced an interconnected body of work. From the early stages, Mazinani has been concerned with two different but connected aspects of the image; the construction of images, and our mediated notion of the world through the constructed image. A Study in the Vertical (2002–2003) is an example of an early attempt at understanding the medium of photography and the production of images. In this work without the use of a negative she exposes the photographic colour paper to light using an enlarger in the darkroom. The results are camera-less abstract images without referents. In her later bodies of work Mazinani has continued asking the viewer to consider how the image is made and represented.

Mazinani's sensibility towards war, how we come to understand conflict and its politics through images and media has resulted in numerous works where she uses pre-existing, archival, and found images to digitally produce abstractions that without attentive observation would appear as ornamentations seen in Islamic art and architecture. Room for Disruption (2011) is an installation made of various components and not limited to the printed photograph; incorporating video, wallpaper, and sculptural elements mixed with images. She creates wall mounted photographic sculptures that protrude and in turn bend our field of vision. These structures usually provide both a central point inviting the audience to look closer, and an expanding geometric field that requires engagement from afar. Making visual juxtapositions, Mazinani challenges the viewer to look at photographs differently. This is best exemplified in Frames of the Visible (2011–2013) produced entirely by images gathered from online media sources. These works often collocate images from opposing political poles in an attempt to question our understanding of conflict, military censorship, circulation and proliferation of information. For instance, when observing one of the pieces from a distance it is physically reminiscent of an aircraft and at the same time that of an Islamic ornamentation.^[6] Once looked at closely one realizes that it is a constellation of two images mirrored, cropped, and repeated in various orientations; a propaganda image of an armed Muslim woman with Hamas banners placed beside an image of a U.S.A. military pilot inspecting a fighter jet.

Mazinani's structuralist approach can be seen as an attempt to scrutinize media by subverting how one perceives images. As characterized in When We Start to Love War (2010), many of her works borrow images that have been filtered through Western sources, but nevertheless are all symptomatic of the East-West dichotomy. Through this methodological approach Mazinani's installations speak back to the dizzying politics behind the global use/abuse of the instrumental visual language of images and simultaneously enable the viewer to be a part of this dialogue.^[7]

Mazinani's art works have been included in numerous exhibitions throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Her most recent solo exhibitions include From Elsewhere to Here at the McIntosh Gallery, University of Western Ontario, in London, ON (2024) and An Impossible Perspective at Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto, ON (2023).^[8] Notable group exhibitions include Light: Visionary Perspectives at the Aga Khan Museum (2024-2025)^[9] and We Are Story: The Canada Now Photography Acquisition^[10] at the Art Gallery of Ontario (2023). In 2013, Mazinani was part of the Border Cultures exhibition curated by Srimoyee Mitra at the Art Gallery of Windsor, Windsor, Canada. This exhibition won the Ontario Association of Art Galleries Exhibition of the Year Award;^[11][12]

Other significant solo exhibitions include: Light Times in 2019 at both the Stephen Bulger Gallery (Toronto, Canada) and the Triton Museum of Art (Santa Clara, California);^[13] Signal to Noise in 2017 at the San Francisco Camerawork Gallery;^[14] Sight, Site, and Insight in 2013 at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography (Toronto) which was accompanied by an exhibition catalogue written by Rosemary Heather;^[7] and Frames of the Visible in 2012 at Stephen Bulger Gallery as a featured exhibition in the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.^[15]

Solo Exhibitions from 2019 to present:

• From Elsewhere to Here, McIntosh Gallery, London, Canada (2024)^[16]

• An Impossible Perspective, Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto, Canada (2023)^[17]

• All that melts: notes from the future-past, Vancouver Art Gallery's public art space: Offsite, Vancouver, Canada (2020-21)^[18]

• Light Times, Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto, Canada (2019)^[19]

Sanaz Mazinani has been commissioned to make many public artworks over her two decade-long art practice. Some notable public artworks include: Dastgāh (2024), a sound sculpture that visitors can walk into and play (made in collaboration with her brother, Mani Mazinani);^[20] Rolling Reflection (2020), a set of 20 cast stainless steel sculptures that mimic San Francisco's unique topography and reflect the unique colours present at different times of day over the Pacific Ocean;^[21] U.S.A.I.R.A.N (2014), a public art installation that activates a vacant space by covering all its windows with a set of twenty-one original digital montages;^[22] and Celebrating Bay Area Activism, a series of six photo-collage works installed in 36 bus kiosks along Market Street in San Francisco, as part of the SFAC Art on Market Street Public Art program (2013).^[23]

Sanaz Mazinani has received funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council for various projects during her nearly two decade-long career.^[24][25] Her project Dastgāh was awarded a Project Support Award from the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts (2024).^[26] Other awards include: publication grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Zellerbach Family Foundation Community Arts Grant;^[27] Best Public Art Project (2014) from Americans for the Arts;^[28] the SFAC Art on Market Street commission for the project Celebrating Bay Area Activism;^[29] Kala Art Institute Fellowship; Magic of Persia Contemporary Art Prize nomination; as well as fellowships and grants from Stanford University during her MFA program.

Mazinani's curatorial projects include an exhibition and site-specific installation in 2011^[30] and three exhibitions in 2013 for the Tirgan biennial festival in Toronto, Canada.^[31] These works are: Made in China, an outdoor art installation by Tehran-based artist Negar Farajiani,^[32] Hope Echoed, an exhibition of portraits of Iranian women by Toronto's lively arts community,^[33] and The Third Space, a three-month exhibition featuring works by six Iranian artists held at the York Quay Gallery in Toronto's Harbourfront Centre^[34] The Third Space focused on the hybrid identities that result from life in the diaspora, and received much acclaim.^[35]

Other curatorial projects have included: New Constellations: Contemporary Iranian Video Art (2012), with colleague Amirali Ghasemi;^[36] Visions of Eternity (2011), including works by Abbas Akhavan, Reza Derakshani, Parastou Forouhar, Oldouz Moslemian, Taimaz Moslemian, Nasser Ovissi, Hamed Sahihi, Soody Sharifi, and Ali Soltani;^[37] ALMANAC: An Index of Current Work and Thought, a collaborative publication addressing the relationship between theory and practice, published by Stanford University (2011);^[38] and Off World (2009), an interactive site-specific outdoor installation of work by Mateo Guez curated in collaboration with Andrew Mallis.^[39]

• List of Iranian women artists
• Iranian Modern and Contemporary Art
• List of Canadian Artists
• List of Iranian artists

• Sanaz Maziniani's Website
• Sanaz Mazinani exhibition, Threshold (2015), at Asian Art Museum of San Francisco