Aryana Minai

Aryana Minai (b. 1994) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Her practice is primarily composed of paper-based sculptures, evocative of architectural forms and reflective of themes such as labor, migration, and her Iranian-American heritage. Engaged with the history of craft, cultural tradition, and diasporic identity, Aryana’s works are both preservations of lost places and creations of new spaces. Her pieces speak to the storytelling capacity of salvaged objects; collecting materials like stones, bricks, and woodblocks from destroyed structures, Aryana then embosses these into dyed paper pulp that is itself crafted from found materials. Resulting from this process are textural and kaleidoscopic forms that are at once nostalgic recollections and hopeful constructions of place. Aryana received a BFA from Art Center College of Design in 2016 and an MFA from Yale School of Art in 2020. Her work has been exhibited nationally. She is represented by OCHI.