Contributor

Maryam Hafizirad is an international award-winning Deaf Canadian Persian painter and sculptor. She is a freelance visual artist, art curator, teacher, mentor and advocate for Deaf artists. A graduate of Isfahan University of Fine Arts (2002), her exhibitions have been featured in Iran, China, Germany, Malaysia, India, Canada and the United States. Hafizirad's early classical Persian works were dark in subject matter and colour, with women's faces and bodies forbidden. When she moved to Malaysia and settled in Canada, her work transformed. She began painting using Persian and Deaf View/Image Art (De’VIA) metaphors with strong contrasting colours and textures, incorporating Deaf experience and values: pomegranates are symbols of released hidden love; fish in water represent sincere human beings in her silent world of pure visual beauty; and birds embodied her newfound freedom as a Deaf woman in this new country.