ABOUT THE ARTIST

Uprooting from Iran and re-grounding in the United States, I have two countries that I love and call home. At times, I feel that I am floating in space and do not fully belong to either of them. My Iranian heritage is interlaced with western values, and vice versa. I find myself trying to maintain a balance – to bridge the gap between the two cultures.

I use patterns derived from traditional Persian imagery and cultural symbols. I deconstruct and reshape them before juxtaposing them with western elements. As my memories of growing up in Iran interact with more recent experiences in the world beyond it, the visual patterns my recollections evoke become more complicated. My work is about the process of cultural assimilation through the reassembling of disparate cultural components. The synthesis of unity and variety functions as a reflection of the entanglements of my own duality.

Tara Yarzand was born in Tehran, Iran. She received a Bachelor of Science in Financial Management from the University of Tehran, Iran and her Master’s in Finance from the University of Manchester, England. Tara had always wanted to be a professional artist and after moving to the United States, she decided to pursue her passion and completed her BFA in Studio Art- 2D studies at the University of Toledo, Ohio. She served as the College of Arts and Letters ambassador and at graduation, was selected as the outstanding student of the year by the Department of Art.

Tara's artworks have been included in numerous shows such as the Sequence exhibition at the Ohio Arts Council's Riffe Gallery in Columbus, OH (2024), the International Art on Loop Exhibition presented by the Holy Art Gallery of London in New York, NY (2023), as well as the TFAS100+5 Juried Regional Exhibition in Toledo, OH (2022) (Purchase Award for Toledo Federation of Art Societies permanent collection). From 2018 to 2019, she painted a double-sided mural for the William S. Carlson Library of the University of Toledo along with a colleague. Their work has been recognized by the University of Toledo’s president and mentioned in numerous articles.