Maryam Hafizirad

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. Maryam's Persian classical early works were dark in subject 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 (DeVIA) metaphors with strong contrasting colours, textures and incorporating Deaf experience and values. Pomegranates were symbols of hidden love released, fish in water represented 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.

---