Interview — Honey Jalali vol 20- collective 21

with us since 2021

Art as a Bridge Between Pain, Memory and Human Connection

Tell us about yourself and your journey into the art world.

I am an Iranian contemporary activist artist based in Calgary, Alberta. My practice is multidisciplinary and includes installation, painting, poetry, digital painting, collage and photography.

I am a member of the Iranian Graphic Designers Society and I hold a Master's degree from the Art and Architecture Azad University of Tehran. I taught Graphic Design at university for fifteen years, and throughout my career I have explored different fields including art history, painting, graphic design, photography, installation, digital art, poetry and theatre.

What inspires your artistic practice?

I explore memories, both good and bad, through multimedia artworks. I want to tell stories about individuals and humanity, about suffering, love and real life across the world.

My work is rooted in conceptual art and gives visual form to my thoughts, fears and dreams.

How would you describe your technique?

My practice moves between different media. I work with installation, painting, poetry, digital painting, collage and photography.

I don't limit myself to a single technique; different languages allow me to explore different dimensions of an idea.

If you had to describe your work through a few words or one image, what would you choose?

My Pillow. My closest friend.

What do you believe is the role of art and the artist today?

We live in troubled times: wars, difficulties and losses. But perhaps the greatest problem is that we still don't care enough about one another.

We are too ready to build walls between ourselves and others instead of bridges.

Through my work, I try to show my pain and your pain, to share it and perhaps find a way towards healing through art.

We need to support each other. 

What has been the most important moment in your artistic career?

The connection between my art and the viewer.

The most important moment is when I can communicate with people through my artistic work, show something about the reality of life, and they can feel it with their heart.

What happened to your artistic journey when you moved to Canada?

I arrived in Canada during lockdown. At that time, I sent my work to NNC VWorld.

What would you like to achieve in the next five years?

I hope to have the opportunity to exhibit my art publicly around the world and to bring art into everyday life.

I am not a seller. I am an artist.

I want to talk to people through my art, not simply sell it. 

Within the NNC community, are there artists whose work has particularly caught your attention?

It is a difficult question because there are many talented artists within NNC VWorld. I honestly cannot choose only one, but I would mention Pejman Norouzi.

Project Focus: REBIRTH

REBIRTH is an ongoing multidisciplinary project by Honey Jalali that explores the fragile territory between memory, loss and transformation.

Working across photography, installation, collage and painting, Jalali creates visual narratives in which ordinary objects become emotional witnesses. A bed, a pillow, a flower or the human body are never simply represented; they become places where personal and collective memory coexist.

The series investigates experiences often surrounded by silence: womanhood, displacement, grief, healing, miscarriage, identity and rebirth. Rather than illustrating these themes directly, Honey constructs poetic visual metaphors that invite viewers to enter the work through their own memories and emotional experiences.

Rebirth represents a shift from survival towards transformation. The tulip, recurring throughout the project, becomes a living body suspended between vulnerability and resilience. The work suggests that healing is never linear; it unfolds through cycles of loss, remembrance and renewal.

The project also reflects Honey's multidisciplinary practice, where photography merges with installation, drawing, collage and symbolic imagery. Different media are not separated but woven together to create immersive emotional landscapes, allowing memory to become both visible and tangible.

Why Invest in Honey Jalali

To invest attention in Honey Jalali means recognising an artist whose practice occupies a compelling intersection between autobiography, conceptual art and social reflection.

Her work addresses universal human experiences—memory, migration, womanhood, trauma and healing—without becoming illustrative or documentary. Instead, Honey develops a symbolic language capable of transforming intimate experiences into shared emotional spaces.

Having lived and worked between Iran and Canada, Jalali brings together different cultural perspectives while maintaining a deeply personal artistic voice. Her multidisciplinary background, combining photography, installation, graphic design and painting, allows her to construct works that move fluidly across media without losing conceptual coherence.

Collectors increasingly seek artists whose work combines emotional authenticity with strong conceptual foundations. Honey's practice offers both. Her installations are visually immediate, yet reveal multiple layers of interpretation concerning identity, memory, femininity and resilience.

Rather than producing images for aesthetic consumption alone, she creates experiences that invite contemplation and empathy. Her work belongs to an international conversation around contemporary female identity, migration, psychological healing and the body as a repository of memory.

For collectors, curators and institutions interested in socially engaged contemporary practices, Honey Jalali represents an artist whose research continues to evolve while remaining intellectually coherent and emotionally accessible.

Curatorial Note

Honey Jalali's artistic practice unfolds at the intersection of memory and materiality. Her works begin with personal experience, yet deliberately move beyond autobiography to explore questions that belong to a wider human condition: How do memories inhabit the body? What remains after loss? Can vulnerability become a place of transformation rather than defeat?

Photography, installation, collage, painting and found objects coexist naturally within her practice because no single medium is sufficient to contain the complexity of emotional experience. Every material carries its own memory; every object becomes an extension of the body.

Recurring elements such as beds, pillows, flowers and fragmented figures are not symbolic decorations but emotional architectures. They function as spaces where intimacy, absence and resilience become visible. In works such as My Pillow, the domestic object becomes a lifelong witness to dreams, fear, love, illness and solitude. In Rebirth, the tulip transforms into a metaphorical body, suggesting that renewal emerges not by forgetting wounds but by integrating them into one's identity.

Migration also plays a fundamental role within Jalali's visual language. Living between cultures has intensified her relationship with memory, turning displacement into a productive space of reflection. Her works speak simultaneously of personal history and collective experience, allowing viewers from different backgrounds to recognise fragments of themselves within her imagery.

What interests NNC Gallery London is precisely this capacity to transform intimate narratives into universal visual experiences. Honey does not seek spectacle or provocation. Instead, she builds quiet yet powerful works that ask viewers to slow down, observe and remember.

Her practice continues to develop through increasingly refined relationships between photography, installation and conceptual thinking. It is a body of work that demonstrates emotional intelligence, formal sensitivity and a sustained commitment to exploring the human condition through contemporary visual language.