Anna Mirzayan (she/her) is a freelance interpretive planner, content developer, arts writer, poet, researcher, editor, and fat curator. She holds a PhD in Theory and Criticism. She was previously the editor-in-chief of the Bunker Review and the Writer/Content Developer for Exhibition at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. She is currently based in Seattle.
Her poetry chapbook, Donkey-girl and Other Hybrids, was published in 2021 by Really Serious Literature. Her first curated exhibition, Soma Grossa, laid a groundwork for critical explorations by fat artists in fine arts, and she wrote about the experience of being a fat curator at Hyperallergic.
Her academic research exists at the intersection of labor studies, contemporary art and photography, and surveillance. Mirzayan studies the impact of militarization on technological development, specifically the connection between war and visual media. Her research thus uses the history of visual fine arts and its co-evolution and cooperation with scopic biopower. She is interested in the intersection of fatness and curatorial/artistic praxis, the history of radical fat liberation and what it means to integrate the fat identity into political and cultural practices.
Mirzayan twice received a graduate research travel award from Western University, where she was also nominated for a graduate teaching award. She was the recipient of a Hodson Fellowship for poetry and archival research, and a writing residency at Sundress Academy for the Arts. She is an affiliate of the Posthuman Research Institute at Brock University.
If you would like to speak with Mirzayan about exhibition development, editorial work, speaking and consulting, curating a show, arts writing, or academic research, please contact her at mirzayana@gmail.com or click the email link below.