MFA Photography, Room B30E

@zahra_momeniii

“Echoes Under Light” (2025), 27" x 20" , Wet Cyanotype, mixed media on coated paper

Zahra Momeni’s artistic practice explores personal emotion, memory, and the search for connection across distance. Her current project is rooted in private acts of writing unsent letters to her mother during moments of longing, choosing silence to avoid causing worry. Instead, she turns to plants—objects deeply loved by her mother—preserving them through cyanotype prints. Each print becomes both a visual offering and a letter, with handwritten text in Persian on the back, later accompanied by English to engage a wider audience while maintaining the intimacy of her native language.

Formally, Momeni experiments with wet cyanotype processes and the expansion of color beyond traditional blue. The layering, textures, and unpredictability of the medium reflect the instability of memory, emotional vulnerability, and the experience of migration. In her work, written elements are often blurred, erased, or dissolved, emphasizing the transitory and in-between nature of communication, presence, and belonging. By combining text, material process, and photographic imagery, Momeni creates spaces where longing, memory, and distance coexist, inviting viewers to reflect on their own experiences of intimacy, absence, and cultural dislocation.