Negar Assari-Samimi

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Negar Assari-Samimi (born April 2, 1970 in Tehran, Iran) is an internationally published conceptual artist. Assari-Samimi was the Invited Artist for the Art and Material Culture of Iranian Shiism Conference at the University of Oxford in July 2006 [1], and frequently contributes artwork and text to Iranian.com [2]. She is a member of The World Academy of Arts, Literature, and Media (WAALM), an organization which promotes various forms of art and awards an annual Persian Golden Lioness Award to artists and scholars [3]. She has also appeared several times as an in-studio guest on Voice of America, speaking in Farsi to Iranian communities on issues of art and culture.

Assari-Samimi has created art to highlight peace, religious tolerance, cultural advancement, women's and children's issues, and to inform communities about global-warming and other environmental hazards. Assari-Samimi works with many different media, including sculpting, drawing, painting, photography, and computer graphics, and has been featured in many exhibitions in the United States and Europe. In 2000, she founded the non-profit Art of Iran organization, which is an online community detailing the history of Iranian art, as well as maintaining a Iranian artists database [4].

Assari-Samimi is the webmaster, in-house artist, and board member for the Children Of Persia charity organization [5]. Since 2003, she has managed the non-profit organization's annual charity calendar by providing artistic direction and creating artwork specifically for the calendar [6].

Assari-Samimi graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the College of Art and Architecture (Tehran) with a concentration in Educational Visual Communication in 1993. After moving to the United States in 1994, she earned a Master's degree in Visual Information Technology from George Mason University (Fairfax, VA) in 1997. She lives near Washington, DC with her husband and three children.

[edit] Works

Assari-Samimi's most notable works are The Cage (2003) [7], Religion And Tolerance (2001) [8], and Art For Peace (2000) [9]. The Religion And Tolerance work was selected for inclusion at the 2003 Florence Biennale (Italy) International Contemporary Art Exhibition [10][11].

She designed the cover for Sheema Kalbasi's poetry compilation book, The Poetry Of Iranian Women [12], as well as two of Partow B. Nooriala's poetry books - Mihan's Future and Four Springs [13], both of which are in Farsi [14]. In 2006, Assari-Samimi designed the cover artwork for two of Fereidoun Farahandouz's poetry CDs - Sedaaye Eshgh (The Voice Of Love) and Faryaad dar Baad (Cry In The Wind) [15]. That same year, she also designed CD art for two Del Lowell & the Smithtones' music CDs, Amor Del Mar and Ethereal [16].

Her most recent work is the theme poster for the Iranian Women's Studies Foundation (IWSF) 18th Annual International Conference, which is to be held June 29-July 1, 2007 at the University of Maryland, College Park campus [17].