Behnaz Ghasempour is an Iranian visual artist based in Virginia. Working across drawing, mixed media, sculpture, and installation, her practice explores human connection, memory, resilience, and interdependence. Drawing and portraiture are central to her visual language, through which she examines how individual experience becomes intertwined with collective memory and the lives of others.

A recurring conceptual foundation in Ghasempour’s practice is the Persian prefix “ham” (هم), meaning “together,” “with,” or “shared.” Embedded in words that describe relationships and shared experiences, ham informs her ongoing investigation of the visible and invisible bonds that connect people across distance, memory, and lived experience. This idea is central to her current body of work, Invisible Threads (2024–present).

In her recent work, Ghasempour extends the language of drawing beyond the surface through copper, thread, transparent materials, layering, and shadow. Copper connects her to Kerman, Iran, and its longstanding traditions of metalwork, while its capacity to oxidize and transform becomes a material expression of change, endurance, and time. Thread carries more intimate associations with care and memory, recalling her mother and grandmother sewing and the quiet gestures through which relationships are formed and sustained.

Through layered portraits, sculptural forms, and installations, Ghasempour considers how memory and human presence persist beyond physical proximity, and how the traces we leave in one another become part of our individual and collective identities.

Ghasempour holds an MFA in Studio Art from James Madison University and B.A. and M.A. degrees in Painting from Iran. She currently teaches Foundations courses at James Madison University in Virginia.