Sepideh Mehraban (b. 1986, Tehran, Iran) is an Iranian-born contemporary artist, curator, and academic working in Cape Town, South Africa. Her multidisciplinary practice spans painting, mixed media, and textile-based works, through which she investigates how histories are constructed, mediated, and contested. Born and educated in Tehran, Mehraban earned her Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts degrees from the University of Alzahra before relocating to South Africa, where she completed further postgraduate study in Fine Art with distinction at the Michaelis School of Fine Art and, in 2022, was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in Visual Arts.

Mehraban’s work is deeply rooted in questions of memory, identity, landscape, and power. Drawing on personal experience, collective histories, and the politics of representation, she interrogates the mechanisms through which dominant narratives—official histories, propaganda, and acts of censorship—shape both public consciousness and intimate recollection. Her layered surfaces, which often incorporate paint, text, archival imagery, and found materials, resist singular readings and instead invite viewers to reflect on what is remembered, forgotten, or obscured.

A distinctive feature of Mehraban’s practice is her engagement with culturally charged materials such as Persian carpets, which appear both as symbolic objects and compositional surfaces. Embedded with references to labour, domestic life, and regional tradition, these materials operate as sites where personal histories and broader social narratives intersect. Through strategies of layering, veiling, and material displacement, her work explores the instability of historical “truth,” while foregrounding experiences of displacement, diaspora, and belonging.

Throughout her career, Mehraban has explored these themes across solo and group exhibitions internationally. Her recent solo presentations include Promise of Paradise (Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, 2024) and Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death (WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town, 2023). Her work has also featured in major international group exhibitions, including Eyes on Iran as part of the Woman, Life, Freedom campaign (New York, 2022–2023). Her work is held in public and private collections worldwide, and she continues to engage critically with questions of history, memory, and identity across cultural contexts.