Parvin Pooya

Parvin Pooya is an artist born and raised in Iran, now living and working in New York.  

Her academic journey began in her home country, at the University of Art in Tehran, where she earned an MA in Drama in 2000. Her dissertation was published as a book titled Beyzai's Grammar, about five of the Iranian playwright Bahram Beyzai’s plays, which she analyzed linguistically, and applied the theories of Roman Jakobson and Tzvetan Todorov. Her dissertation received praise from Beyzai himself and was honored with Iran’s 8th-cycle "Student of the Year" award for the field of art in 2001. Following this, she taught art courses at Ferdosi Teacher Education College from 2001 to 2003.

She further pursued her studies in the U.S., earning an MA in American Studies/Art and Museum at Trinity College in Hartford in 2014, for which she received Honors in Graduate Scholarship. Her drive to engage deeply with American culture and history — embarking on an intellectual project to frame her American experience through the lens of Iran’s artistic and cultural styles — led her to open the Tea Haunt Canvas gallery, which she operated from 2011 to 2017, and served as a unique oasis for art and culture in Downtown Hartford, Connecticut.

In 2017, she completed an MA in Humanities and Social Thought/The Art World at New York University, for which she was a recipient of the Hurston Scholarship.

Her art focuses on themes such as immigration and identity; community and belonging; the individual and society; and Iranian culture, politics, and spirituality. She is informed by her life experience in both Iran and the U.S., and by her admiration for theater and storytelling. Her oil-canvas and mixed-media paintings employ a variety of styles, including surrealist and impressionist techniques.

Many of her paintings take inspiration from Persian poems. One draws on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Others speak to significant social moments, such as the Connecticut law allowing marriage equality, which hangs in the Hartford Public Library. Another, which links Harriet Beecher Stowe’s work to the presidency Barack Obama, is in the Stowe Center in Hartford.