Laleh Mehran was born in Iran and relocated with her family to the United States at the start of the Iranian Islamic Revolution. She creates elaborate environments in digital and physical spaces focused on complex intersections between politics, religion, and science. In a political climate in which certain views are increasingly suspect and can have extreme consequences, Mehran’s artworks are invitations to think again about each of these paradigms and the profound connections that bind them.
Mehran received her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University. Her work has been shown across the USA and countries around the world including the ISEA (United Arab Emirates), National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (Taiwan), FILE (Brazil), ACT Festival (South Korea), 404 International Festival of Art & Technology (Argentina), Next 5 Minutes 4 Tactical Media Festival (Netherlands), European Media Arts Festival (Germany), Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Massachusetts), Mattress Factory Museum (Pennsylvania), Carnegie Museum of Art (Pennsylvania), Vanderbilt University (Tennessee), The Andy Warhol Museum (Pennsylvania), Denver Art Museum (Colorado), Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (Colorado), and Currents International New Media Festival (New Mexico).
She has received awards including the Creative Capital Foundation Grant (subRosa collective), Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, West Virginia Commission on the Arts, and the Cultural Program for Enhancing Mutual Understanding from the American Embassy in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Mehran is a Professor of Emergent Digital Practices at the University of Denver and a Resource Artist at RedLine Contemporary Art Center.