Iranian-American artist Nazanin Moghbeli has training in Persian calligraphy, miniature painting, and music. She borrows techniques from Iranian calligraphy to create abstract drawings with traditional bamboo “ghalams,” or quills. Rather than using these techniques to create religious objects as they were originally used, she explores the secular meaning of line in and of itself. She seeks the complete dissolution of words and prefers instead to create abstract images, her alternative to religious object making.

Moghbeli grew up during the turbulent years of the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. In her art, she grapples with her dual identities as an Iranian and American to shed light on what happens when that which seems disparate comes together. The simultaneous contradictory presence of violence and beauty, conflict and harmony, bloodshed and community are central to her work.