About Shabnam Jannesari

Shabnam Jannesari is an Iranian-born artist whose work has been exhibited widely across the United States and internationally. She received her MFA with distinction from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and is currently Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

In spring 2027, Jannesari will present a two-person exhibition at ShowUp Gallery in Boston, MA, and a solo exhibition at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She will also be an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center. Her recent solo exhibitions include I Shall Bring You to the Garden’s Edge at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (Wilmington, NC, 2026) and She Sat Where the Light Awaited at the Erie Art Museum (Erie, PA, 2026). Other recent exhibitions include Made in the Plains at the Joslyn Art Museum (Omaha, NE, 2025) and Look but Look with Love, a two-person exhibition at the NARS Foundation (Brooklyn, NY, 2024). Earlier solo exhibitions include Each String is a Thread, Each Color a Chord at the Nebraska Arts Council (Omaha, NE, 2023) and The Carpet Grew Like a Garden at Gallery 263 (Cambridge, MA, 2021). Her work has also appeared in numerous group exhibitions, including the Mid-Atlantic Biennial at the University of Mary Washington (VA), A Pot Nudged into Oblivion at Miranda Art Project Space (New York, NY), Narrative Imperative at the University of Connecticut, and Domestic State at Wheaton College (MA). Her paintings are held in private and institutional collections, including Fidelity Investments and the University of Massachusetts School of Law.

She has received two Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grants (2020, 2022) and the Distinguished Art Fellowship at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (2018–2021). In 2025, she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture residency.

Jannesari’s large-scale figurative oil paintings construct dreamlike domestic interiors in which women inhabit worlds of freedom, intimacy, and self-determination, spaces that stand in stark contrast to the social realities of contemporary Iran. While rooted in Persian culture and her own lived experience, the work speaks more broadly to women’s lives within patriarchal societies. Drawing on history, politics, philosophy, and Persian visual traditions, she explores the symbolic and psychological potential of domestic space, often using the Persian carpet as both a cultural and conceptual motif. Through rich, saturated color, these imagined spaces invite viewers into another world where beauty, resilience, and quiet resistance coexist.

Contact: 
shabnamjannesari@gmail.com