Parvaneh Roudgar is an artist whose trajectory has been shaped not merely by academic training, but by a life lived across cultures, geographies, and diverse human experiences. Her works reflect a deep engagement with cultural memory, migration, identity, and the relationship between human beings and nature, concepts that, over more than three decades of professional practice, have crystallized into a personal, mature, and coherent sculptural language.

Roudgar’s artistic journey began in 1984 with her move to Italy, where she pursued formal training within one of the world’s most enduring sculptural traditions. Her years in Florence, a city where art history is embedded not only in museums, but also in architecture, urban space, and daily life, played a foundational role in shaping her artistic vision. Studying with masters such as Antonio Di Tommaso and Marcello Fantoni provided her with a grounding in technique, anatomy, composition, and a deep respect for material. Yet Florence was more than a site of technical instruction; it was the place where sculpture emerged as a language of thought and emotion, a medium capable of articulating complex human experience.

“Here, form becomes a vessel for experience: a silent motion shaped into presence.”

More than two decades ago, amid escalating social and political crises in the Middle East, a new phase emerged in Roudgar’s practice. These developments, viewed through the lens of her lived experience as a Middle Eastern woman, deeply affected the direction of her work. During this period, questions of the body, identity, and women’s presence within contexts of conflict and instability became increasingly central to her artistic concerns.

To articulate these experiences, Roudgar turned to one of the most complex and culturally charged symbols associated with Middle Eastern women: the veil. Rather than representing the female body or face directly, she transformed the chador (veil) into a living sculptural form. Through its movements, folds, and moments of release, the veil becomes a vessel for the female voice, a voice that carries motherhood, endurance, pain, and hope. In these works, the veil does not signify silence or passivity; instead, it becomes a site of expression and agency. Roudgar does not seek to judge the veil itself but instead suggests that while political or social systems may attempt to regulate women’s bodies through enforced dress, they cannot conceal women’s inner lives, emotions, resilience, and presence, which continue to manifest even within the shadow of the veil. This approach allowed her to translate a layered and nuanced experience of womanhood into sculptural form without resorting to direct narrative or overtly didactic statements.

Artist’s Statement

Middle East Women
The chador (veil) became a language for me, a language to speak what has not been spoken, to loosen inner knots, and to give voice to the weight of history and the identity of Middle Eastern women.
In its movement, in twists, stillness, and release,
the voices of women flow: voices of motherhood, patience, pain, hope, and long-held silences.
I am myself a Middle Eastern woman, with all her history, identity, pain, and beauty. This body of work reflects years of living, migration, experience, my love for Iran, and the inner voices of women to whom history has rarely given the chance to speak.
I transformed the chador into a figure, a figure without a body, because even without a face or form, and even when power attempts to erase them, it cannot conceal women’s emotions, memories, and history.

Geometric Sculpture
I have always been deeply influenced by Iran’s historic architecture, an architecture that is not merely structure, but narrative, rhythm, and the spirit of a civilization. From turquoise domes to muqarnas, from elongated arches to tilework that covers walls like celestial carpets, these were never just visual beauty for me, but a language of geometry, balance, and spirituality.
In Iran’s historic architecture, everything is in its place: each line continues another, each curve responds to another curve, and every geometric motif reflects an underlying system of thought.

Alongside her studio practice, Parvaneh Roudgar has realized numerous public art projects. One significant example is a body of works created concurrently with the beginning of her migration to Vancouver, a body of work in which the sculpture Migration (permanently installed in 2020 at the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary on Australia’s Gold Coast) stands as one of its most important realizations. These works were shaped by the artist’s observation of Canadian seabirds, whose light, far-reaching flights across vast, borderless oceans became metaphors for movement, transition, and the search for new horizons. In this body of work, migration is articulated not merely as departure from a place, but as a journey grounded in hope, survival, and an organic relationship between humans and nature.

Another notable public work, Mother and Child, was commissioned by the City of Port Moody and installed in 2017 as part of the Evergreen Project at the Inlet SkyTrain Station. This sculpture exemplifies Roudgar’s ability to create works that function simultaneously on a public and deeply emotional level, articulating a universal bond that transcends culture, language, and geography.

Over the course of more than thirty-eight years, Parvaneh Roudgar has participated in numerous national and international exhibitions across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Her works exist not only within gallery contexts but also within public spaces, where they engage diverse audiences and become part of the collective memory of place.