Mandana Ranjbar
Iranian American photographer, instructor, and software engineer working from Houston, Texas, with a practice that began in Tehran twenty years ago.
Artist statement
I tell visual stories through light, composition, and multidimensional art. As a feminist conceptual artist, my work addresses the difficulties human beings face in the context of inequality, discrimination, and power. My artworks depict the inner emotions of a variety of women.
To portray their feelings about the oppression they experience, I use props and particular objects in staged photographs. I make surreal scenes that look imaginary in a created space somewhere between reality and fantasy, and express these problems symbolically. Establishing social equality is one of my driving purposes, and I aspire through my art to reach everyone.
Biography
Mandana Ranjbar Cheshmeh Sorkhi is an Iranian American photographer, instructor, and software engineer based in Houston. She was born in Tehran, where she trained in software engineering at the University of Science and Technology before turning to photography. After working as a theater photographer in Tehran — photographing more than three hundred productions for the Iranshahr Theater, the Iranian Artists Home, and the Fajr International festivals — she relocated to Houston, where she received her MFA in Photography from the University of Houston in 2023.
Her photographs have been shown at the Blaffer Art Museum, Elgin Studios, and in international group exhibitions in Rome, the United Arab Emirates, and California. The Color of Freedom and Captivity series were exhibited as solo presentations at Elgin Studios in 2023 and 2022. In 2022 she founded the Woman.Life.Freedom initiative at the University of Houston, directing and curating a collaborative response by women artists to the protests in Iran.
Beyond the studio, she teaches at the University of Houston and Houston City College, and works as a Senior Lab Assistant in Studio Art. She is bilingual in English and Persian, and works across photography, video, mixed media, and code.