Featured artist
Maryam Nazari
by Francesco Liggieri

Maryam Nazari‘s artistic practice unfolds as a sustained investigation into the processes through which meaning is produced, articulated through an interdisciplinary methodology that integrates performance, sound, installation, and image within a unified operational field. Far removed from illustrative or conventionally narrative approaches, her research focuses on the construction of experiential dispositifs that destabilize the fixity of visual and performative codes, encouraging modes of engagement grounded in interpretive openness and the spectator’s perceptual participation. Within this framework, the artwork is not conceived as a finished object but as a temporary configuration of relations, activated in the moment of encounter. The body occupies a central position within this system, though not as a site of self-representation or as a direct symbolic vehicle.

In Nazari’s performances, the body functions as a critical surface, a transitional space upon which cultural tensions, layered memories, and conditions of vulnerability are inscribed. Rather than asserting an identity, it suspends its definition, operating within a zone of ambiguity that resists the fixation of meaning. In keeping with a conception of contemporary art as a space of unresolved complexity, the performing body becomes a structural element of inquiry rather than an expressive medium in the traditional sense.

Nazari’s practice as a whole may be understood as an open semiotic system, in which signs do not refer to univocal contents but instead activate plural interpretive processes. From this perspective, her work aligns with a theoretical tradition that recognizes art’s capacity to generate meaning not through the transmission of messages, but through the construction of perceptual and cognitive contexts. The reference to an Eco-inspired conception of the artwork as an open text is particularly pertinent here: meaning is not immanent to the work itself but emerges through the dynamic relationship between formal structure, context, and interpretation.

Sound constitutes one of the most significant elements within this construction. Rather than serving as accompaniment or atmospheric enhancement, sound assumes an organizational function, shaping the spatial and temporal dimensions of the artistic experience. Nazari’s musical training and her engagement with instruments and sonic traditions of Persian origin are rearticulated in a non-identitarian, structural key. Sound operates as a non-discursive language, capable of directly affecting perception and generating an expanded temporality and a condition of listening that precedes verbalization. In this sense, sound does not represent; it acts, configuring itself as an agent of signification rather than as a readily decodable sign.

A comparable role is played by the recurring use of the Persian carpet, which figures in Nazari’s research as both a cultural object and a conceptual device. Far from any symbolic or decorative application, the carpet is understood as a stratified material text, bearing historical, social, and narrative codes. Through practices of deconstruction, reconfiguration, and reinscription, the artist foregrounds its processual nature, calling into question established categories of tradition, craftsmanship, and cultural heritage. The carpet thus becomes a site of negotiation between memory and transformation, continuity and displacement, revealing the dynamic character of culture as a system of signs in constant redefinition.

Although the biographical dimension remains present as a horizon of reference, it is never assumed as a dominant interpretive key. Experiences of migration, cultural plurality, and geographic displacement are translated into a formal grammar that avoids linear narration and identity authentication. Identity, in Nazari’s work, emerges as a discursive and relational construction rather than as an original given. This approach enables her practice to evade both the logics of cultural representation and those of autobiographical testimony, situating it instead within a critical space that interrogates the very conditions under which meaning is produced.

Taken together, Maryam Nazari’s works can be understood as complex semiotic environments in which body, sound, and material operate as interdependent elements within a single system. Their strength lies not in the articulation of a specific content, but in their capacity to render perceptible the processes through which meaning is constituted, fragmented, and transformed. In this sense, her practice fully engages with contemporary debates on the modalities of aesthetic experience, offering a rigorous and self-aware contribution to reflections on the role of art as a critical and epistemic space.

more. www.maryamnazari.co.uk

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