Helia Pouyanfar

Instagram: heliapouyanfar

Website: https://heliapouyanfar.com/

Bio: Born in 1995 in Tehran, Iran, Helia Pouyanfar immigrated to California in 2014. Inspired by her cultural background and in an examination of passage and the relationship between liminal spaces and transit, her research endeavors to illustrate and investigate the permanently transient state of the refugee body and its negotiation and reconciliation with Place. Pouyanfar has been the recipient of the Lauren Krikorian Memorial Prize and Certificate of Excellence in Sculpture from UC Berkeley, Mary Lou Osborn Award and the 2021 Margrit Mondavi Graduate Fellowship from UC Davis, 2024 Berkeley Civic Arts Individual Artist Grant, and 2024 Kala Art Institute Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, de Young Museum, Skirball Cultural Center, Miami University, Root Division, Southern Exposure, Berkeley Art Center, SF Camerawork, Foyer-LA, Personal Space, and Kala Art Gallery. She currently resides and maintains an art studio practice in the Bay Area.

Statement: My conceptual art practice investigates the permanently transient state of the refugee body and its negotiation and reconciliation with Place. Informed by my personal experience of living as a refugee for three years, my research explores the intricate relationship between the body and Place by humanizing and narrating the deeply poetic and peculiar experience of forced exile. The act of mirroring is a vital component of my work. In its metaphorical sense, I am interested in pushing architecture into movement. This ironic redefining of Place and its transformation from a physical structure to a metaphoric concept mirrors the intricate reality of the exiled. I see architecture as the poetry of the nomad and seek to translate this poetry by turning consistent into transient, and immovable into transferable while honoring its nonlinear reality. Time and movement are intertwined, and one defines the other. Leaving becomes a circuitous act: for the nomad, to end is to continuously begin.