MFA 2026 Artists MFA 2026 Artists: Sarah Valinezhad

About Sarah Valinezhad

Sarah Valinezhad is an Iranian artist and educator based in Massachusetts. She is an MFA candidate in Illustration at the UMass Dartmouth, where she also teaches foundation-level studio and digital media courses. Her work has been exhibited at the New Bedford Art Museum, the Cultural Center of Cape Cod, the Peninsula Art League National Fine Art Show in Washington, the 10th Annual Kehler Liddell Gallery Juried Show in Connecticut and most recently for the 8th Louisiana Biennial at Louisiana Tech University. She has been recognized by the Graphis New Talent Awards, Women Artists on Rise Artbook, and 3x3 International Illustration Magazine. Valinezhad has also contributed to community arts programming, museum education, and summer youth art camps across New England. She continues to build a practice shaped by storytelling, teaching, and the commitment to creating images that hold depth, presence, and humanity.

Statement

Domestic space is central to my practice. Interiors compress, fracture, or repeat, echoing the way memory accumulates rather than unfolds linearly. Figures appear suspended within these rooms, caught between stillness and movement, visibility and concealment. Rather than illustrating specific narratives, I build atmospheres that allow emotional states to surface indirectly, inviting viewers to remain with ambiguity and emotional tension.

My work is deeply informed by Iranian women’s lived experiences and the ongoing fight for freedom in Iran. Personal memory merges with collective history, shaping images rooted in domestic life yet charged with political urgency. The home appears as both refuge and site of constraint, where care is inseparable from control and intimacy exists alongside fear. Within these spaces, the body becomes a vessel for intergenerational memory, carrying traces of endurance, resistance, and survival.

Materially, my process is slow and accumulative. I build, disrupt, and rework surfaces, allowing evidence of revision to remain visible. This approach reflects my interest in emotional residue and transformation, where meaning emerges through repetition rather than resolution.

Ultimately, my work seeks to make visible the emotional architectures that shape women’s lives in Iran and beyond. By foregrounding interior spaces and the bodies that inhabit them, I aim to honor vulnerability alongside defiance, and to mark the continuous fight for freedom as something lived quietly, persistently, and intimately.

Website: www.sarahvalinezhad.com