Farima Fooladi was born in Tehran, Iran, and lives and works in Austin, Texas. She is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at the University of Texas at Austin and received her MFA from Pennsylvania State University.
Her recent work explores the shifting relationship between architecture and landscape, tracing how our sense of place is shaped by movement, distance, and change. Drawing from experiences across Iran, the United States, and the Arctic, her paintings consider how political, environmental, and personal histories leave their traces on the built environment and the landscapes that surround it.
Fooladi is the recipient of a 2024–2025 MacDowell Fellowship, Lawndale’s 2024 The Big Show Award, and a 2023–2024 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. She was a 2023 Artists on Site Resident at Asia Society Texas Center and, in 2026, an artist-in-residence at the Spitsbergen Artists Center in Svalbard, Norway, where she developed a new body of work responding to environmental change and the shifting landscapes of the Arctic. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in public collections, including the Houston Airports Civic Art Collection.