Sepideh Mehraban is an Iranian-born artist, working and living in Cape Town. Her work explores memory and landscape, looking at the overlaying and veiling of paint as a means of expressing layers of existence and experience. She was born in Tehran and obtained her BA (2009) and MA (2011) from Alzahra University (Tehran, Iran).
In 2012, Mehraban worked on and was awarded a postgraduate diploma in Fine Art at Michaelis School of Fine Art (Cape Town, South Africa) and has since also completed a second masters degree with distinction at the same institution. She has worked as a set designer and collaborated on puppeteering projects. Mehraban also has worked as an assistant lecturer in the Department of Painting at Michaelis School of Fine Art. She is a PhD candidate currently lecturing at the University of Stellenbosch.
In her academic work, as well as in her personal projects there is sensitivity toward recent history in Iran, which she incorporates and explores through text, figurative works and abstraction, often drawing on the grid format of newspaper as a source of inspiration.
Between Homes, Between Forms, Between Languages, made in collaboration with Olivié Keck and Kathy Robins, creates a virtual reality (VR) experience and responds to the current issues around diaspora and the concept of home. Using the digital medium the work translates these ideas from the physical world into the immersive digital landscape.
Mehraban first solo exhibition was titled Retracing Memories at Golestan gallery (Tehran: 2015). The selection of recent group shows she has participated includes: Cape to Tehran at Gallery MOMO (Cape Town and Johannesburg: 2018), Close Encounters at Smith Studio (Cape Town: 2018), SS17 at Gallery MOMO (Cape Town: 2017), Distill Motion at Smith Studio (Cape Town: 2017), A Painting Today at Stevenson Gallery (Cape Town: 2017), Art Meets Camera: Closer than ever Gallery MOMO (Cape Town: 2017), Chartingcurated by Andrew Lamprecht at Eclectica Contemporary Gallery (Cape Town: 2016), Imago Mundi at Fondazione Giorgio Cini (Venice: 2015). Her works are part of different private and public collections including: Alzahra University (Tehran, Iran), University of Cape Town (Cape Town, South Africa), Spier Art’s Trust (Cape Town, South Africa) and Thulamela Chambers (Johannesburg, South Africa).
Sepideh Mahraban’s work titled, Between Homes, Between Forms, Between Languages made in collaboration with Olivié Keck and Kathy Robins, is part of the Zeitz mOCAA exhibition, The Main Complaint (2018 – 2019).