Parisa Azadi

During the residency, she developed recent works while ruminating over her identity, approach, practice and the idea of home. Parisa returned to Iran after 25 years of self-exile, where she embarked on a personal and political reclamation of her identity and history. With images spanning 2017-2023, the collection of photographs, 'Ordinary Grief' is her attempt to reconcile despair and joy, exhaustion and hope. It's about ordinary Iranians actively trying to create new futures for themselves despite the odds. It's a love letter to a country from which she feels estranged, despite having been born there, and to the people who call it home. Her photographs mark the passage of time as they document physical, emotional, and political limbo: they question what it means to long and belong.

The residency is in partnership with Photo Kathmandu as part of the South Asia Incubator Programme 2023-2025.


Parisa Azadi is an Iranian-Canadian documentary photographer with a keen interest in history and conflict, memory and displacement.

 

For over a decade, Parisa has worked extensively in the Middle East, South Asia, Africa, and Canada. She has reported politically sensitive issues such as missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada, the Syrian refugee crisis in Jordan and the illegal practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Uganda. Since 2015, Parisa has been working in the Middle East, examining the nuanced dynamics of communities living in the aftermath of political violence.

 

In 2023, Parisa was selected by the British Journal of Photography as 'Ones to Watch'. Parisa's work has been presented in group and solo exhibitions across Europe, and her latest solo exhibition was at Melike Bilir Gallery in Hamburg Germany in 2022. Her work has been recognized by the World Press Photo 6x6 Global Talent Program. Parisa earned the Magnum Foundation Mobility Grant (2023), Women Photograph Emergency Fund grant (2020) and the Chris Hondros Fund Award (Eddie Adams Workshop, 2019).

 

Her photographs have been published by The New York Times, The Guardian, Vogue, Associated Press, Annabelle Magazine, Malala Fund, International Rescue Committee, among others. 


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