about
Maryam (Nilu) Ghasempour Siahgaldeh (b. 1994) is an Iranian artist and researcher working with documentary and conceptual photography. She is currently an MFA candidate in Photography at Kansas State University. Before moving to the United States, her work focused on northern Iran, where she documented intimate moments from everyday life, with particular attention to older women and men living under the Islamic regime, as well as broader social justice issues, including women's rights and child labor.
After years of artistic restriction and censorship, she, like many Iranian artists, was forced into migration and exile. Since then, her practice has been shaped by the experience of living between memory and displacement, navigating a dual position as both insider and outsider. This in-between space informs her visual language and research-driven approach.
Her work merges photography, archival materials, and critical inquiry to explore themes of migration, memory, gender, and survival. Through layered images and long-term projects, she examines how women and immigrant communities carry home, identity, and resistance across borders.
Currently, she documents life in the United States through the perspective of someone unable to return home due to political oppression, revisiting and reinterpreting her archive to reflect on longing, resilience, and belonging.
