Maryam Takalou (Persian: مریم تکلو) is a Dallas-based, Iranian-Tehran artist who explores space, landscape, and memory through video, installation, sculpture, and other visual media. Drawing on Persian painting traditions as alternative modes of perception, she repositions these forms within Western landscapes to examine the body, memory, and their roles in power structures. Her work investigates defamiliarization and the restructuring of landscape, viewing them as visually constructed phenomena rather than objective realities.
Takalou earned her MFA in Studio Art from Florida State University in 2022 and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she teaches courses on visual arts. In 2010, Maryam received first prize for drawing at the Afarinesh Festival at the University of Tehran and the Art Youth Festival at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. She also received the Florida State University Scholarship Award (2019), the Andy McLachlin Memorial Award (2021–2022) for exceptional artistic achievement, the Mary Ola Miller Reynolds Award (2021) for outstanding contributions to studio art, multiple Artistic Materials Fund Awards (2019–2022), the Harry W. Bass Jr. Graduate Research and Travel Award (2023 and 2024), and the Robert Plant Armstrong Endowed Scholarship Fund (2024 and 2025). She was awarded the Mala and Adolph Einspruch Fellowship for Holocaust Studies, the Selwin Belofsky Fellowship in Holocaust Studies, and the Mike Jacobs Fellowship in Holocaust Studies in April 2025.
She was also Florida State University’s nominee for the Dedalus Foundation Fellowship in 2022. Maryam participated in and curated over 40 exhibitions at prominent galleries in Tehran, including Hoor, Shirin, Arya, and Elahe. She has presented her work at multiple conferences. Her book Painting in Video Art (in Persian) was published in 2012 by Mehr-Nourouz (Tehran). Maryam recently published a book chapter, “Diaspora Artist’s Application of Landscape and Body,” in ReFocus: The Films of Shirin Neshat (Edinburgh University Press). After moving to the United States in 2019, she participated in several exhibitions and workshops in Florida, Massachusetts (Boston), and Texas. Takalou’s work has been featured in SIX Magazine (2021), VOA TV News (2023), Dallas News (2023), Head Topics (2023), and more.
