My practice explores the intersections of nature, ruins, and symbolic forms as meditations on time, resilience, and transformation. I am drawn to what is fragile and fading, to the awareness that we rarely know when something is experienced for the last time, and to the possibility of preserving memory in the face of disappearance.
I create imagined landscapes where past and future, wilderness and ruins, coexist on a single plane. Symbols—solitary trees, pillars, moons, and deserted dwellings—speak of solitude and loss, while open skies, flowing water, and infinite pathways gesture toward hope and renewal. These spaces invite viewers into moments of concealment and exposure, where they find themselves both indoors and outside, at the dusk and dawn of civilization.
Underlying this practice is a fascination with endurance. Mountains, ruins, and other natural and built forms remind me that serenity often conceals immense pressures, and that resilience is not static but dynamic. The work reflects survival—how we, like the landscapes we inhabit, are shaped by silence, rupture, and the possibility of renewal.
Bio
Azadeh Nia was born in 1988 in Tehran, Iran, received her MFA from the University of The Arts London in 2014, and relocated to the U.S. in 2016. Currently, she is a resident at Silver Art Projects in New York City.