Sanaz Mazinani (Sānāz Mazināni ساناز مزینانی) (she/her) is an Iranian artist, educator, and curator based in Tsí Tkarón:to/Toronto, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, including Mississaugas of the Credit, Chippewa, Haudenosaunee, and Wendat peoples. Working across the disciplines of photography, sculpture, and large-scale multimedia installations, Mazinani creates art objects that invite a rethinking of how we see and experience knowledge. Informed by the visual rhetoric and confounding presence of media circulation, her multidisciplinary practice aims to politicize the proliferation and distribution of images, invite critical reflection, and forefront social justice and environmental movements.
Mazinani is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at the University of Toronto. She holds an undergraduate degree from Ontario College of Art & Design and an MFA from Stanford University. Her work has appeared in solo exhibitions at institutions including the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the West Vancouver Museum, and Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara, California. Her projects have been featured in venues throughout Canada as well as China, France, Germany, Guatemala, India, Iran, Switzerland, the UAE, UK, and USA. Mazinani’s work has been written about in Artforum, artnet News, Border Crossings, Canadian Art, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, among others. She has received grants from the Canada Council, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and National Endowment for the Arts, and her work is held in public collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the City and County of San Francisco
