Multidisciplinary artist Sara Nejad will embark on a year-long residency commencing 31 January to launch Museum of Brisbane’s Artist in Residence program in 2025, engaging with local communities and drawing on the mandala as a motif to explore themes of identity and belonging.
Sara’s residency aims to highlight the beauty of our individual experiences, as well as the importance of togetherness, through mesmerising mandalas. Mandalas – geometric configurations of symbols – have a rich history in Persian art and architecture. Sara is drawn to the significance of these designs in her own life, but also their resonance across other cultures and spiritualities.
During her Museum of Brisbane residency, Sara invites audiences to collectively create a series of mandalas that celebrate the beauty of our multicultural city and encourage us to stand together in our differences. Over several months, these collaborative works will be added to and displayed in the Museum of Brisbane as an unfolding installation.
Working across mixed-media, painting, pyrography, installation and video, Sara draws from her personal experiences of living in transition and weaves them into issues of place, memory and emotional conflicts. Her recent series, Recurrence and Emergence, comprises a triptych of mandalas that create meaningful dialogue between the personal and cultural, past and present, trauma and healing.
Museum visitors can see the community project take shape as it weaves through the Museum throughout 2025 and even meet the Artist in Residence, Sara on 9 February.
Museum of Brisbane’s Artist in Residence program is supported by Tim Fairfax AC.
This residency is part of Brisbane City Council’s BrisAsia Festival, running from 31 January to 9 February 2025 and produced by Sounds Across Oceans.
The 2025 Artist in Residence program marks Museum of Brisbane’s fifth year of participation in the annual BrisAsia Festival.
More info: Artist in Residence: Sara Nejad – Museum of Brisbane | MoB
Photos courtesy of the Artist
