Nazafarin Lotfi is an Iranian multi-disciplinary artist who studies how the self and notions of identity are understood in relationship to architecture, landscape, space, and place. She explores humanness in relation to non-human bodies and places that are defined by practices of map-making and gardening. Nazafarin was born in Mashhad, Iran in 1984 during the Iran-Iraq war. She is one of three girls, her mother was a teacher who introduced her daughters to arts and literature. And her father owned a small business. Her exposure to the arts was limited as a child before she attended the University of Tehran where she earned her BA in Industrial Design. With ambitions to further her education in the West, Nazafarin headed to the US and gained an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After graduating she took to teaching, always seeking a life that would reflect her art. She would soon find a place for her work in exhibitions and shows, nationally and internationally at venues such as the University Galleries at Illinois State University, Tucson Museum of Art, Artpace, Phoenix Art Museum, and Elmhurst Museum of Art. Nazafarin is the recipient of 2023 Eliza Moore Fellowship for Artistic Excellence. She says of her art: “I think placing myself between two very different aesthetics and ideologies allows me to create a more complicated personal language. And that does more justice to the complexities that I experience as an Iranian female artist living in the U.S. I grew up with social realist propaganda and had developed a mistrust of it. I come from a traditional society for which history weighs so much, and that can be limiting.’ Nazafarin is represented by Regards in Chicago. She lives in Tucson, Arizona with her husband Peter, a Professor of Persian Poetry, and two cats.Nazafarin's website: http://www.nazafarinlotfi.com/ Instagram: @nazafarinlotfiHost: Chris StaffordProduced by Hollowell StudiosFollow @theaartpodcast on InstagramEmail: hollowellstudios@gmail.com