Nazafarin Lotfi (she/her) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores body, space, and how they inhabit each other in connection with notions of belonging, presence, and identity formation. Through sculptural forms, architectural drawings, and performative photography, her work addresses the hierarchies inherit in formalism and aesthetic subjectivity in relation to power, worth, and ability. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011 and her BA from the University of Tehran in 2007.
Lotfi is the recipient of 2023 Eliza Moore Fellowship for Artistic Excellence. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including Artpace, San Antonio, TX; Regards, Chicago, IL; Phoenix Art Museum, AZ; San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries, CA; MOCA Tucson, AZ; Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, IL; Tucson Museum of Art, AZ; University Galleries at Illinois State University, Normal, IL; and The Arts Club of Chicago, IL, among others. In 2021-22, Lotfi served as the Matakyev Research Fellow at the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University. Her practice has received support from the Arizona Commission on the Arts (2024, 2023, 2022); the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona (2024, 2022, 2018); Night Bloom: Grants for Artists through the Andy Warhol Foundation and distributed by MOCA Tucson (2021); Sally & Richard Lehman Award, Phoenix Art Museum (2019); and CAAP Grant from the City of Chicago (2012). Lotfi is the founder of Hamrah Ars Club, a creative placemaking program mentoring refugee-status youth.