Photo Credit: Andisheh Shahidi

Madihe Gharibi (b. 1995, Iran) is a concept-based artist using different mediums including performance, radio, installation, and writing as vehicles to convey her ideas. With a BA in Dramatic Literature and an MA in Fine Art, her practice has been shaped by both disciplines, and traces of each continue to inform her work. She began her artistic career in Iran as a playwright and theatre director; after moving to Norway, her practice expanded into interdisciplinary and participatory forms.

Her diasporic experience has shaped her practice through three phases. The first explored displacement and dual belonging (Dual Homeness); the second examined ways of connecting to Norwegian society while negotiating multiple identities (Still-Others). Her current phase approaches migration through translation (Carry Across). Translation, for Gharibi, extends beyond language: it is the process of carrying meaning across borders, contexts, and forms, and transforming it through encounter. In her individual practice, she explores how lived experiences, histories, and cultural references can be translated into new artistic media, languages, and contexts. Her position between cultures gives her a shifting, two-point perspective from which questions of self and other are continuously renegotiated.

Parallel to her individual practice, Gharibi has developed a collective practice rooted in authorship and agency. Throughout her artistic journey, finding her own voice has given her a stronger sense of agency. This has led her to create conditions in which others can exercise authorship themselves. Since 2019, she has worked through writing with teenage girls in Iran, women living in a refugee camp in Norway, and girls in Afghanistan deprived of education.

This trajectory led her to initiate the MAAN literary circle, a platform connecting Farsi-speaking people across geographical borders through writing, particularly those outside professional artistic contexts. At its core is the question of how writing and art can create a sense of home and belonging for people living with displacement. Today, MAAN consists of five writing groups meeting online and in person across Iran, Afghanistan, and Norway. Texts emerging from these communities travel between the groups and are translated into visual and performative forms, publications, and exhibitions presented within the Norwegian art context, as in I Never Thought I Could Share My Writings.

These two threads are distinct but intertwined: one translates Gharibi’s own experiences across contexts, while the other creates structures through which experiences can be authored collectively. Both are rooted in her understanding of authorship as a form of agency a way of responding to the social and political realities in which we live.

Gharibi is currently based in Oslo and continues to develop both directions of her practice. Within her individual practice, she is developing The Passion of Jeanne d’Arc, a theatre-installation planned for presentation at Black Box teater in autumn 2027. Her collective practice continues through the development of MAAN, with new participants, workshops, guest teachers, and artistic collaborations, leading towards a three-day festival centred on One Thousand and One Nightsat Melahuset in June 2027.

Gharibi holds a Bachelor’s degree in Dramatic Literature from the University of Tehran and a Master’s degree in Fine Art from the University of Bergen. Her work has been presented in Norway, Denmark, and Iceland, including at Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen Kunsthall, and Fotogalleriet.