About the artist
Melika (b. 1998, Tehran), widely known as Melzarts, is a multidisciplinary artist based in the UAE. Raised in Dubai, she holds a degree in Art and Art History from New York University, with studies in Film and Animation at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her practice spans painting, installation, sculpture, animation, and photography.
Her work is introspective and emotionally driven, engaging with transitional moments, inner shifts, and the quiet weight of memory. Influenced by her Persian heritage, and shaped by her upbringing in Dubai, and lived experiences across New York, Paris, and Abu Dhabi, Melika’s practice explores how identity, place, and emotion are carried through material and image. Through bold color, flowing forms, and poetic compositions, her work traces invisible relationships between objects, spaces, and emotional states.
Ordinary items, such as blankets, birthday balloons, or wilting flowers, recur as emotionally charged forms, acting as vessels for themes of belonging, nostalgia, comfort, loss, and spiritual reflection. These motifs anchor an evolving body of work concerned with presence, absence, and quiet transformation.
Melika has participated in various group exhibitions, including Ras Al Khaimah Fine Arts Festival (2025), Seen/Scene at Rizq Art Initiative (2025), New York University Abu Dhabi Project Space, Sikka Art Fair (2023) organised by Dubai Culture, Firetti Gallery at Alserkal Avenue as part of the NBF Art Prize shortlisted artists exhibition, and the Noon Art Award shortlisted artists exhibition, where her painting Grey received the Painting Category Award. Her animated short film The Lockdown was selected as the opening film of the annual Tisch Animation Film Festival in New York (2022).
Her work has been featured in publications including Cosmopolitan, Khamsah, Magzoid, The National, Broadway On Demand, Gulf News, and Al Bayan.
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In hindsight, everything is just a thing until you give meaning to it, isn’t it? But what is the point of it all if we don’t? My work explores nostalgia and embraces giving meaning to moments and objects.
I hope my art brings you comfort, and inspires you to see the good, the beauty, the kindness, the magic, and the wonder in the world. I hope it inspires you to embrace life and all that it brings, and perhaps, reflect on what has shaped your perspective.”
-Melzarts
“.چشمهارا باید شست. جوره دیگر باید دید”
“We must wash our eyes. we must see in a new way”
- Sohrab Sepehri, Persian Poet And Painter
My work resists bold declarations. Instead, it is grounded in quiet observation – of moments, emotions, and the subtle shifts in how we experience the world around and within us. I’m drawn to the ordinary: objects, people, places, and the spaces between them. Through these, I explore how meaning is formed, altered, and carried over time.
The work reflects overlooked transitions; loss, belonging, comfort, and the ongoing search for meaning, without forcing resolution. It embraces complexity and ambiguity, allowing memory and emotion to surface gradually. Rather than offering answers, the practice becomes an act of witnessing: attending to the layers that shape how we connect to ourselves, to others, and to place.
Take, for example, my recent triptych, Blanket. On the surface, it may appear as simple paintings of fabric—three wooden panels, each painted in one of the three primary colors: blue, yellow, and red. But these colors flow and merge, connected yet distinct, each evoking a different and intense emotion.
This piece is a meditation on the months spent in lockdown, in a city that felt unfamiliar and isolating. The blanket, a constant companion, traveled with me from place to place, offering warmth, comfort, and a quiet anchor amid uncertainty. I think of the countless hours spent under it, attending classes, seeking refuge, and processing the overwhelming emotions of that time. It is the very same blanket I sit on now as I write this.
Color is an essential language in my work. While I once questioned its importance, it has become clear that vibrant hues are the most direct way to communicate the emotions that dwell beneath the surface.
Whether through colored pencils, oil and acrylic paint, clay, film, photography, or animation, colors and flows are the threads that connects my diverse explorations.
Flow and movement are also central motifs, whether in the folds of fabric, the drip of paint, or the rhythm of shapes, inviting a sense of quiet contemplation. These flows carry a subtle echo of poetry and mysticism, inspired in part by the spiritual traditions I have encountered, like the whirling dervishes, which embody transformation through motion.
Above all, I want my work to be a space for immersion, to invite viewers to lose themselves momentarily, to feel deeply, and to reflect on their own perceptions and memories. I want my work to invite you in – to pause, feel, and perhaps see something familiar in a new light, connecting quietly with your own memories and emotions.
