Sara Shamsavari is a British-Iranian interdisciplinary artist based in London. Her work has been exhibited internationally for over 20 years in museums and public spaces, including the Southbank Centre and City Hall, London; Museo Bardini, Florence; the British Embassy, Tehran; and the Lowe Museum of Art, Miami. Sara has lectured at prestigious institutions across Europe, America, and the Middle East. Currently teaching at Central Saint Martins and Chelsea College of Art, Sara leads art history courses that explore social change, ethics, and engagement through art. She also delivers regular talks and workshops in museums and public spaces, including the V&A, the Royal Photographic Society Library, the National Gallery, and Tate Britain.
Born in the midst of the Iranian Revolution, Sara recovered from infant cancer while fleeing war in Iran and was granted asylum at the age of two in the UK, where she and her family have resided ever since. Her early experience of surviving war, alongside her rich Iranian heritage and upbringing in the UK, has shaped her perspective and continues to inform her artistic subject matter. 2022 and 2023 marked a period of absence from art-making following her survival of a second life-threatening illness, hospitalisation, and subsequent recovery. Her early and more recent brushes with death have inspired an urgency in Sara to create, and she has returned to painting in full force.
Shamsavari’s work explores themes of global identity, inclusion, and transformation. At its core, Sara’s photography centres on the strong connection she shares with the participants in her work who, like herself, are from migrant backgrounds. Her photographic projects have provided a platform for diverse identities to be seen and heard, thereby challenging and subverting narrow ideas around gender, race, orientation, and faith, encouraging us all to look beyond the surface. Whilst the two are related, conversely, Sara’s paintings look inwards, creating a connection to her heritage across time and distance, and reflect her own journey as a former refugee and the ongoing trauma faced by refugees and minorities around the world. Each painting contains words in Persian; these words are often obscured, drawing our attention to their absence.
Sara’s work has been widely published in books and media, including Aperture, The Guardian, The New York Times, and the BBC. In 2024, she was the recipient of the Pioneer 20 Award in recognition of her empowering photographic work on identity. Shamsavari’s work sits in several significant public and private collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, and the NoVo Foundation, New York, founded by Peter and Jennifer Buffett. Artist Yinka Shonibare CBE also recognised Sara on the spine of a book in his “British Library” installation, naming migrants who have made a significant contribution to British culture.