Shifting Perspective by Azadeh Gholizadeh

Azadeh Gholizadeh, born in Tehran (1982), left her home country in search of freedom and currently resides and works in Seattle. Azadeh’s practice explores the connection between landscape and memory through the structured and tactile language of needlepoint and weaving. Working with yarn, felt, and wood, she examines how absence, distance, desire, and longing shape our perception of place and leave traces of both personal and collective memory.
In her recent works, Azadeh has incorporated augmented reality to expand her exploration of longing. This interplay between craft and technology invites the viewer into fluid encounters where landscapes become archives and where belonging reveals itself as fragile, shifting, and deeply felt.
Azadeh holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Science and Technology in Tehran (2008) and a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2012), where she studied under Richard Rezac and deepened her exploration of geometry as a metaphor for memory and time. Her architectural training continues to inform her work, grounding her abstractions in structural precision. Gholizadeh’s work has received recognition through New American Paintings Pacific Coast issue #175, the Artadia Award in Chicago (2022), and the Hopper Prize (2022). Additionally, her work has been featured in The New York Times, including the article More Miami Art Fairs to Explore (2023).