Based outside Philadelphia, Michan Pour-Azar is a multi-disciplinary artist who uses both past childhood and more recent memories to address issues of cultural identity, generational grief, and familial matters left undone. As an Iranian-American, she explores her opposing sides and the environments that helped shape her. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design, as well as her Masters in Art Therapy from the School of Visual Arts, as she became more interested in the combination of art and psychology.

Early in her career, Michan founded a children’s visual arts organization, ECHO prosocial gallery, based in New York City. The program mirrored the focus of her own artistic practice, giving young people a voice through their art to speak out on various social issues. As a result, ECHO worked with children ages 6 to 16 from various socio-economic neighborhoods, exhibiting their paintings in window installations and galleries throughout NYC. In addition, ECHO worked with students at Marta Valle Junior High School on Stanton Street, to create a permanent installation of ten life-size tile mosaic sculptures, still located in the M’Finda Kalunga Community Garden in the Lower East Side. After 9/11 and during the prevalent Islamophobia, ECHO’s young artists created and sewed over 100 “Peace Dolls” to children in Kabul, Afghanistan as a show of solidarity.

Michan’s current art practice is focused on creating installations, working with fabric, painting, and personal photographs of childhood and family to stitch together soft sculpture figures that often invites viewers to participate and sometimes adding to the artwork. Through reframing and reimagining her family history and contemporary societal issues, she incorporates magical thinking and documentary-style art installations.