Nasim Nasr

Iranian-Australian contemporary artist
Lives and works in Sydney, Australia

Nasim Nasr is an Iranian-Australian contemporary artist whose practice explores identity, migration, gender, language and cultural belonging.

Born in Tehran, Iran, Nasr moved to Australia in 2009. Her experience of living between Iranian and Australian cultures informs a practice concerned with the complexities of displacement, visibility and belonging, and with the ways personal and cultural identities shift across borders.

Working across photography, video, performance, sound, installation and sculpture, Nasr often draws upon gestures, objects, language and rituals connected to Iranian culture. Recontextualised within contemporary Australian and international settings, these elements become a means of examining relationships between East and West, tradition and modernity, the personal and the political, and silence and expression.

Nasr completed a Master of Visual Arts (Research) at the University of South Australia in 2011. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally, including at Photo London 2023; Asia Society Museum, New York 2020-2021; TarraWarra Museum of Art, Victoria 2014; Powerhouse Museum, Sydney;2018, Art Dubai 2014-2015; Art Stage Singapore 2012 and A Shaded View on Fashion Film Festival, Paris multiple times.

In 2025, Nasr undertook a Creative Australia residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, alongside presentations of her survey work in Paris, Berlin and Salzburg 2025. Her work has received numerous awards and nominations, including winner of the People’s Choice Award at the William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize and Best Micro Short Film at the Adelaide Independent Film Festival, winner A Shaded View on Fashion Film Festival, Paris 2018.

Nasr’s work is held in public and private collections in Australia and internationally, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Powerhouse Museum, Parliament House Art Collection, Artbank, and the Gene and Brian Sherman Collection.

Her work has been written about in major publications by Professor Anne Marsh, Doing Feminism: Women’s Art and Feminist Criticism in Australia, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press; Video Void by Matthew Perkins, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne; Performance_ Ritual_Document, Macmillan Art Publishing, Sydney; Adam Geczy, Transorientalism in Art, Fashion and Film, Bloomsbury London; Adam Geczy & Mimi Kelly eds, What is Performance Art? Australian Perspectives, Power Publications, Sydney.