Sara Mameni


Sara Mameni is a Canadian visual artist, curator, and scholar.

Writing & career

Mameni completed a B.F.A. in Visual Arts from Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Afterwards she obtained an M.A. from the University of British Columbia and a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of California in San Diego. During her Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego Mameni wrote her dissertation titled, “On Persian Blues: Queer Bodies, Racial Affect,” Mameni's “research, publications, and curatorial work gender, race, and sexuality” with contemporary art and visual culture in Iran. Mameni has written articles and reviews for Canadian Art, Fuse Magazine, Filip Review, and the Journal of Women and Performance. In June 2011 Mameni curated the exhibition, Snail Fever, at the Third Line Gallery in Dubai. Mameni was an education coordinator at the Vancouver Art Gallery, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is Director of the Aesthetics and Politics MA program at the California Institute for the Arts.

Selected publications

Mameni has an interdisciplinary art practice that includes sound installation, drawing, and creative and scholarly writing. Some of Mameni's exhibitions include a series of redrawn public posters taken from Granville and Smithe Street in Vancouver in 2004 and sound installation at Western Front Gallery about "India's booming economy, which " a fictional investment plan." Mameni's artwork is in permanent collections at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Selected exhibitions

In 2009, Mameni was awarded the Canadian Art Foundation Writing Prize for her account of artist Denise Oleksijczuks’ creation of the film Role. Mameni has received grants from Canada Council for the Arts and the Mary Lily Research Grant.

Personal Life

Mameni was married from 1998 - 2010.