BIO
Kimya Bagherpour Oskay (b. 1990) is a multifaceted interdisciplinary artist, historian, author, and scholar. She brings together expertise in image theory, social science, and art. To do so, she employs various media including painting, photography, digital art, and poetry.
Hailing from a diasporic background, she embodies a rich tapestry of Persian, Azeri, and Turkish cultures. While her poetry is deeply rooted in these cultural backgrounds, her interdisciplinary artistic and scientific pursuits embrace a transnational outlook, informed by her experiences living and working in diverse global locations.
Proficient in seven languages, she possesses the ability to conduct scientific research in each. As an artist, she draws upon diverse corpus within these languages to support the contextualization, juxtaposition, and analysis of imagery in her work.
Her journey as an artist began firstly with her art teacher's encouragement at the Büyük College in Ankara, Turkey. This encouragement led to her first oil painting exhibition at the same college in 2005. She then followed this path by starting apprenticeships at different art studios in Iran and Turkey. In addition to painting, she started publishing her poems both in Persian and Turkish during this period.
Later, during her B.S. degree, she attended photography lectures, which fostered her interest in the subject. She undertook two photography projects, one in Tabriz, Iran, and the other in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Subsequently, she directed her academic pursuits towards exploring the theory of the lens.
Kimya B. Oskay holds a Master of Arts degree in History from Bilkent University. Her scholarly journey commenced as an image theorist, with a particular emphasis on the theoretical framework of photography and its role in social documentation. She revealed her studies as the author of “Photography and Politics in Iran in the Naseri Period" in 2018. During her subsequent doctoral studies, Oskay deepened her expertise in visual culture by analyzing the interplay between photohistorical semantics and their socio-cultural contexts.
Currently, she lives and works in Sion, Valais, Switzerland.