Sara Ghalandari is a visual artist working across sculpture, installation, and material-based practices. Her work begins with observation—temporary spatial conditions, material encounters, and environmental phenomena that often go unnoticed within everyday landscapes.
Through collecting, transforming, and reconfiguring found materials, textiles, wire structures, plant matter, and natural dyes, she investigates how natural processes and human activity continuously shape and reshape one another. Many of her projects emerge from direct encounters with specific places, where materials become traces of accumulation, adaptation, erosion, and change.
Working between the organic and the constructed, Ghalandari creates site-responsive installations that explore transformation as an ongoing process rather than a fixed state. Her work invites viewers to experience space as a dynamic field of relationships, where materials carry traces of time, movement, and environmental change.
Selected Awards, Grants & Competitions
2026 — Invited Artist, Kunst am Bau Competition, Salzburg, Austria
2022— Vanessa Preger McGillivray Award from the University of Applied Arts and the City of Vienna for the diploma project
2022— Working scholarship from the University of Applied Arts and the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, Austria
Selected Residencies
2025–2026 — ISTA Art Residency, Institute of Science and Technology Austria, Klosterneuburg, Austria
2025— Medium Festival, 3rd Person in Town, Rasht, Iran
2025 — Art of Kochro, Hoorshid residency, Qeshm Island, Iran
Selected Exhibitions
Solo Exhibitions
2025— Emergent Field, Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), Klosterneuburg
2022— Circle as Space, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria
2022— Circle as Space, Site-Specific Art Gallery, Vienna, Austria
2020— Unit, Porgy & Bess Gallery, Vienna, Austria
Group Exhibitions
2025— Fast Forwads 6, Iranshahr Gallery, Tehran, Iran
2025— Non-Decomposable, Torabi House, Rasht, Iran
2024— Here and Now III, Neuer Kunstverein Vienna, Austria
2024— What Else Should They Be, Pamėnkalnio Gallery, Lithuania
2023— On the New, Belvedere 21, Vienna, Austria
2022— Approximating, AG18 Gallery, Vienna, Austria
2021— GAL, NORM-AL, Haus Wittgenstein, Vienna, Austria
2021— In der Feldforschung (1), Selected Foto Wien, Vienna, Austria
2020— The 8th Tehran National Sculpture Biennial, Tehran, Iran
2020— Hospitality, Hinterland Gallery, Vienna, Austria
2020— Gespaltene Welt - Tod und Leben, Das Praxis Kollektiv Wollzeile, Vienna, Austria
2019— Finissage, Installation, Site-Specific Art Gallery, Vienna, Austria
2018— The Essence 18 Sculpture, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria
2017— Hands-on Trans Art Department, Vienna, Austria
2013— Mehrin Gallery, Tehran, Iran
Education
2017-2022— MFA,Site-Specific Art, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria
2006-2010— BA in Textile Art, Tehran Art University, Tehran, Iran
2013-2014— Diplom in Interior Design, Tehran Computer and Science-College, Tehran, Iran