Sara Masinaei

Sara Masinaei (b. 1982, Tehran, Iran) is an artist based in Dubai who works in installation, video, photography, performance, audio and mixed media. Her subjects are belonging, memory and identity. She looks at how social and political histories settle into landscapes, bodies and the spaces of daily life. She works by walking, tracing, collecting and documenting, and through performance and spatial intervention.

Her photographic series Medial Women (2016) was a commission from the University of Oxford's Women and the Canon Conference. It examines post-1979 images of "the Iranian woman" through spaces and objects reserved for women. Pamenar (2017) is a frottage in acrylic on canvas, taken from a nine-square-metre stretch of Pamenar Street, Tehran. For Harvest (Tehran Series) she set herself a six-month residency in Tehran, walking through rich and neglected districts. She rubbed pavements and manhole covers onto canvas, naming each canvas after the place where she made it. Nelson Mandela Exit (2018) is a video shot from taxi back seats in Tehran during the nationwide protests of January 2018. Walk relays bricks from Dubai's pavements in one of the city's original patterns for visitors to walk on.

She holds a BFA in Visual Communication from the American University in Dubai (2004). In 2011 she completed an MA at Central Saint Martins, London. Solo exhibitions include Holy Movement, Atbin Art Gallery, Tehran (2008), and Harvest, Mah Art Gallery, Tehran (2018). Boundaries and Breaches followed at Dom Art Projects, Dubai (2026). Group exhibitions include the 11th Iran Photo Biennial, Tehran (2008), and Vantage Point Sharjah, Sharjah Art Foundation (2013). Residencies include 1646, The Hague (2018), Studio Thirteen, Dubai (2025 to 2026), and Dom Art Projects, Dubai (2026). By her own account, her work is in the collections of the Imago Mundi Collection, Italy, and the Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai.