She Sat Where The Light Awaited
Shabnam Jannesari
September 4th, 2025 — March 1st, 2026
Main Gallery
Influenced by the rich visual culture of her birthplace, Isfahan, Iran, Jannesari’s paintings incorporate flat patterns and bold forms to explore abstraction, memory, and identity. Her highly saturated palette draws from childhood memories, such as the colorful carpet in her grandparent’s home in Iran. These carpets, symbolic of paradise, inspire a dreamlike world where past and present merge. In her paintings, Jannesari transforms her closest friends and family into figures in surreal and hopeful visions of an alternate reality, expressing deeply personal stories that are also relatable to women who have been censored, sexualized, or oppressed by patriarchal social structures.
Meet The Artist
Shabnam Jannesari currently serves as Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She obtained her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and has exhibited her works both internationally and in the US. Her recent exhibitions include a two-person show “Look but look with love,” at NARS foundation in Brooklyn, NYC, solo shows at the Nebraska Art Council in Omaha, NE, and at the 263 Gallery in Cambridge, MA, as well as in group exhibitions at the Joslyn Art Museum, Nebraska, the Miranda Art Project Space, NYC, the Alexey von Schlippe Gallery at the University of Connecticut, and the Beard and Weil Gallery at Wheaton College, MA.
Jannesari's works have been acquired by institutions and collectors, including Fidelity Investments and the University of Massachusetts School of Law. She was selected for the Chautauqua Art Residency program in 2022 at Chautauqua Institution in New York and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture residency in Maine in 2025.