Migration in Dialogue – Azadeh Nia
Studio shot of Azadeh Nia. Courtesy of the artist.
Azadeh Nia is a Brooklyn-based painter born in Tehran, Iran. She received her MFA from The University of Arts London in 2014. A current Silver Art Projects resident, Nia’s work explores the possibilities of space and architecture, the relationship between exteriors and interiors, alternate realities, and parallel existences.
As a part of the Migration in Dialogue series, Nia talks about Persian gardens, isolation, finding artistic freedom, and motherhood.
Felicity Wong: Your paintings intersect worlds and reimagine lived realities, which I see as intimately connected to the immigrant experience. Do you see yourself as an immigrant artist?
Azadeh Nia: I don’t necessarily see myself as an immigrant artist, as my work isn’t necessarily informed by Iranian or Middle Eastern identity. However, I am thinking about immigration; my art is autobiographical, reflecting on a past that no longer exists. There’s a lot of solitude in my paintings, which is a result of the life of an immigrant who has left everything behind. My parents, siblings, and I all live in four different countries. It’s a whole new level of loneliness, not uncommon for this generation of Iranians. So, I depict isolation in my paintings: a universal feeling of contemporary life that comes from the lack of community in our society.
Azadeh Nia, Pardis (2024). Acrylic on panel, 30 x 24 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
FW: I’m especially thinking about cities, which often seclude people from each other even though they live in such close proximity. What has working in New York been like? How did you end up at the Silver Art Projects residency?
AN: I received my MFA in London over ten years ago. Immigration slowed down my career as an artist. I moved from Tehran to London, and there, I met my partner, who was my classmate. He’s American, which is why I moved to the United States. I had to uproot my whole life twice. I’ve also found that you’re completely disconnected from the arts community in the US if you didn’t attend an American art school, so I’ve struggled to pursue opportunities and residencies. After I had my two kids, I had even more responsibilities, which was challenging without much of a support system. I tried to keep my art practice alive, and for a long time, I was doing it for my own sanity. I worked full-time day jobs at art galleries, helping artists sell their work without focusing on my own as much.
I lost my last job because of my pregnancy, but it was actually a blessing in disguise because I would’ve never quit my day job to pursue my practice. Suddenly, I was at home, heavily pregnant and unemployed, so I started painting full-time. My second daughter was only six months old when I accepted this residency, but it was too big of an opportunity to turn down. I’m painting full-time now, preparing for a show that opens in a month.
FW: How will this show be different from your past work?
AN: The show encompasses a series of paintings inspired by the last time I was home in Iran, right before the pandemic. When I was there with my husband, I was pregnant with my first daughter. At the time, Trump had ordered the assassination of an Iranian general, so the political climate was tense. Escalation into war seemed like a real possibility. When we tried to travel back home, flights started getting canceled, and the airspace should have been closed, but it wasn’t. A passenger plane was shot down, and over three hundred people died. My sister almost got on that plane.
Once we finally landed in New York, we read in the news that the Iranian government had shot the plane down in confusion about its presence. The realization that our own government could kill people like us—immigrants returning to see their families—was terrifying. Before we left, we were worried my husband would not be able to leave Iran because he was an American visitor, and I heard news that they weren’t letting Iranians into the US. It’s one thing to be an immigrant, but it's another when your existence as a family becomes virtually impossible.
The trip up to that point was a fairytale. We visited historic houses and Persian gardens, and I started creating these dreamscapes. I didn’t realize then that it would be the last time I’d be in Iran. It’s the not knowing that something will be the last time that forces you to reflect on it later. I work completely from memory, not from photographs, and my memories of home have started to fade, so I’m trying to record everything.
Azadeh Nia, In the Kitchen (2023). Acrylic on panel, 30 x 24 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
FW: That is incredible, given the amount of detail in your work. In the Kitchen is one of my favorites, with the frigidaire, the tulips, and the papaya. If you’re not directly working from photographs or real-life scenes, can you tell me a bit more about your process?
AN: With that painting, I started thinking about a corner and all the spaces in a room that one can hide. The kitchen is warm and intimate—my favorite place to be—and the details make the painting autobiographical. You can see my toddler’s Elmo toy, for example. I create narrative puzzles that let the viewer piece together the story. The kitchen is a traditionally feminine space, but I put knives on the wall to disrupt that idea. I like to play with contrasts between the smooth, meditative scenes and their disturbing undercurrents. I also like humor—the Elmo toy is funny.
FW: You’ve talked about how integral your family has been to your practice. With In the Kitchen, are you thinking about domestic living spaces differently from your more natural landscapes?
AN: My interiors hold more visible traces of my parenting life, but when I was going through my pregnancy and lost my job, I felt trapped by them. It started with one painting, When the Springtime Comes Again. Once I made it, I felt like I had broken free. So, I started painting more landscapes with exteriors.
Azadeh Nia, When the Springtime Comes Again (2023). Acrylic on panel, 30 x 24 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
FW: I was looking at your work from 2013, which is very abstract. Closer to 2020, your pieces become more representational, but they’re still not as realistic as your paintings now. What has guided your stylistic transformation?
AN: Before my MFA, I studied graphic design, but I’ve become more painterly over time. I try to make realistic spaces that are also compositionally bold. There have been ups and downs with the looseness and rigidity in my composition, and I think I’m now bringing it back to looseness. I want to let my work breathe a little. It takes effort to free myself from this need for perfectionism and control. I’ve recently realized that I missed making mistakes, so I stopped covering the sides of my panels and tried to embrace messiness as a history of layers.
FW: You mention in your artist statement that you draw inspiration from architectural, cinematic, and literary sources. How exactly have these influenced your work?
AN: Iranian architecture resonates with me because it’s surreal by nature. For example, Persian gardens are contained by walls and usually exist in non-endemic climates. I’m also influenced by early modernist American paintings and surrealist literature, like “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges or House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, which is about a house with an ever-evolving interior. Inside, it doesn’t make sense, and the places within the house keep appearing and disappearing. It’s an abstract way of looking at space. One of my favorite filmmakers is Abbas Kiarostami, who films scenes of characters driving through the desert. I love Taste of Cherry and And Life Goes On, which both feel very contemporary and poetic.
FW: Are you currently reading or watching anything interesting?
AN: I like finding one author and reading all their books. I’ve been reading a lot of Paul Auster. The painting I’m working on right now is inspired by one of his characters in Baumgartner, who describes a dream where he’s talking to his deceased wife through a telephone that isn’t plugged in. Although the words coming out of his mouth cannot be heard, they still understand each other.
I don’t have time to watch anything new. Between having two kids under the age of four and my work, I’ve had to learn to be disciplined. I’m the only mother at the residency, which isn’t surprising. But not having that extra time and freedom has made me more serious about painting. Pursuing my practice had to become impossible for me before I could really fight for it. Ever since having my second child, I’ve been laser-focused on my art.
Photo of Azadeh Nia’s studio. Courtesy of the artist.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Nia’s first solo show, A Silent Volcano, will be open at Fridman Gallery in New York from November 21 to December 21. In the Kitchen will be available for sale at a benefit auction in November hosted by ArteEast, a nonprofit organization dedicated to spotlighting artists of Middle Eastern and North African diaspora.
