Fall 2025 Exhibitions

Nazanin Noroozi: False Dawn

Memory, Loss

September 12 – November 22, 2025

The Print Center is pleased to present Nazanin Noroozi: False Dawn and Memory, Loss. In her compelling series, “False Dawn,” Noroozi brings together moving and still images of migrants attempting to sail from northern Africa to southern Europe, the joy experienced by her family in Iran before the 1979 Revolution and the freedom of mid-century American tourists. The artists in Memory, Loss – Janet Biggs, Will Harris, Eloise Hess, Katherine Hubbard, Kaitlin Santoro, Edra Soto and Hester Stinnett – grapple with the impact of dementia on their loved ones, and by extension themselves. Using carefully selected printmaking, photographic and video processes, they translate those experiences and emotions into visual form.

Exhibition Resources

Announcement Card

Press Release

Gallery Notes

In the News

Why Memories Matter Broad Street Review

Programs

All of The Print Center’s exhibitions and programs are free and open to the public.

Gallery Talk + Opening Reception

Thursday, September 11, 5:30 – 7:30pm 5:30pm, Gallery Talk with Noroozi, Harris, Stinnett and Lauren Rosenblum, Jensen Bryan Curator 6 – 7:30pm, Opening Reception

Artist Talk: Nazanin Noroozi

Thursday, November 6, 6pm In-person and on Zoom

Conversation with Dr. Jason Karlawish

Wednesday, November 12, 5:30pm In-person Dr. Karlawish, Director, Penn Memory Center, will be in conversation with Lauren Rosenblum, Jensen Bryan Curator

Public Exhibition Tours

Wednesday, September 24, 12:30pm Friday, October 3, 5:30pm Wednesday, October 29, 12:30pm Friday, November 21, 5:30pm RSVP requested, but not required: info@printcenter.org

Nazanin Noroozi: False Dawn

Nazanin Noroozi: False Dawn explores the contending forces of home and displacement, as well as travel and migration. The title of both the exhibition and the artworks, False Dawn – fajr’e kâzeb in Persian – refers to a natural phenomenon called zodiacal light, a cast of unearthly light appearing on the horizon that anticipates the sun’s rising or trails behind its setting. In the right conditions, it is observable just before dawn and after dusk. Noroozi is captivated by “this transitional moment, suspended between night and day, darkness and light.” Further, for her, it embodies the “uncertain space between departure and arrival.”

At the heart of the exhibition is the video False Dawn, 2025, that intersperses media coverage and coast guard footage of the ongoing refugee crisis along southern European shores with clips of hand-painted Super 8 family films and found, mid-20th-century images taken by American tourists. The images of overcrowded migrant boats and stranded individuals, which were initially circulated through the news media, are altered and re-contextualized. Noroozi’s use of these news clips highlights the experiences of some of the approximately 123.2 million refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced persons. The clips incorporated from home videos were taken in Iran before the Revolution in 1979, in which women in her family are joyfully celebrating and swimming. These moving images are interspersed with pictures of scenic landscapes captured by American tourists. Noroozi uses water as a symbolic visual motif to unite these distant places.

The exhibition also includes numerous large-scale works on handmade paper, screenprinted with stills from the video. Noroozi developed a highly experimental process of layering screenprinting and wet-hand papermaking at the renowned papermaking studio Dieu Donné in Brooklyn, NY. This technique allows her to transfer photographic images onto paper as she makes it, resulting in richly pigmented colors and highly tactile surfaces. Read more in the Gallery Notes. 

Nazanin Noroozi (b. 1985, Tehran, Iran; l. New York, NY) has a BA from Soore University, Tehran; an MA in Art History from the University of Art, Tehran; and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from Pratt Institute, New York. She has exhibited widely, including at the Noyes Museum of Art, Atlantic City, NJ; SPACES, Cleveland, OH; and Baxter St. Camera Club and Nevelson Chapel, both New York, NY; among others. Her work is in the collections of Alfred University, NY; Harvard Art Museum, Cambridge, MA; New York Public Library, New York; and Arizona State University, Tempe. Noroozi has had residencies with the Artistic Freedom Initiative and Mass MoCA, as well as received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and Dieu Donné. Her work was featured in the British Journal of Photography, Brooklyn Rail, Die Zeit Magazine and the Financial Times. Noroozi is editor-at-large for Kaarnamaa: A Journal of Art History and Criticism.

Memory, Loss

The artists in Memory, Loss explore the unknowable, physical and psychological experience of their loved ones’ dementia through photography, printmaking and video. Artists Janet Biggs, Will Harris, Eloise Hess, Katherine Hubbard, Kaitlin Santoro, Edra Soto and Hester Stinnett employ deliberately chosen artmaking processes and techniques in attempts to understand the inner lives of their family members.

The artworks are dense with memories, occupying the space between those who hold them and those who have lost them. Dementia – a general term that describes severe loss of memory, attention, language, reasoning and thinking – is a very common, yet little-understood health concern. It is estimated that among Americans over the age of 65, 7.2 million, or 1 in 9 people, live with Alzheimer’s, a degenerative brain disease that is the most common cause of dementia. The exhibiting artists contend with the questions and challenges of dementia from the position of a caregiver.

Artworks in the north gallery are organized around the theme, “the present body.” Photographs by Harris, Hubbard and Santoro of their family members with dementia reveal the widening chasm between their minds and their physical presence. Artworks on the landing and in the Zemel Family Gallery by Biggs, Hess, Soto and Stinnett address the theme of “mediation,” serving as pathways to grapple with the unknowable interiority of a person with memory loss. Read more in the Gallery Notes. 

Janet Biggs (b. 1959, Harrisburg, PA; l. Brooklyn, NY) has a BFA from Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, PA and studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence. Biggs has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC; Berman Museum of Art, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA; Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, TX; and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; as well as the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Canada. Biggs’ work is held in numerous collections. She has been the recipient of awards and grants including the Anonymous Was a Woman Award, Artic Circle fellowship and residency, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Biggs is represented by Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York.

Will Harris (b. 1990, Philadelphia, PA; l. Philadelphia) has a BFA from University of the Arts, Philadelphia, and an MFA from Lesley University, Cambridge, MA. In 2019, he was a Critical Mass finalist and received their MFA Scholarship. He has exhibited in the US, India and Denmark. In 2020, he received a Black Creative Endeavors Grant from Something Special Studios, NY and in 2024 was an artist-in-residence at TILT, Philadelphia. His book, You can call me Nana, was recognized as a finalist for the 2021 Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Award and was shortlisted for a Lucie Foundation Photobook Award. The book is in collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York and George Eastman Museum Library, Rochester, both NY.

Eloise Hess (b. 1995; l. Los Angeles, CA) has a BA from Bennington College, VT and an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University, New Haven, CT. Hess has had solo exhibitions at Helena Anrather, New York, NY; von ammon, Washington, DC; and Matta, Milan, Italy. She has participated in group exhibitions at 86 Walker and Yossi Milo Gallery, both New York; SPURS Gallery, Beijing, China; and Zero… & Matta, Paris, France. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, Flash Art and Mousse Magazine.

Katherine Hubbard (b. 1981, Philadelphia, PA; l. Stone Ridge, NY and Pittsburgh, PA) received a BFA from Parson School of Design, New York, NY, and an MFA from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. Hubbard has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Brooklyn Museum, The Kitchen, MoMA PS1, and New York Public Library, all New York, NY; as well as the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France. Hubbard’s work is in the Whitney Museum of American Art collection and has been discussed in Art in America, Artforum, n+1, The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Village Voice. She has had residencies at The Chinati Foundation, Recess and Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. Hubbard is MFA Program Director and Associate Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. She is represented by Company Gallery, New York.

Kaitlin Santoro (b. 1991; l. New York, NY) has a BFA from the University of Connecticut, Storrs and an MFA from Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. Santoro has exhibited at the International Center of Photography and Print Center New York, both New York, NY; and DaVinci Art Alliance, Fabric Workshop and Museum and Temple Contemporary, all Philadelphia. Her work is held in the collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, NY; Fabric Workshop and Museum; Thomas Dodd Research Library, University of Connecticut, Storrs; and Sculpture Space, Utica, NY. Santoro has participated in residencies at the Manhattan Graphics Center, Oxbow School of Art, and Pilchuck Glass School. Santoro is Assistant Teaching Professor at Montclair State University, NJ.

Edra Soto (b. 1971, Puerto Rico; l. Chicago, IL) has a BFA from the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Diseño de Puerto Rico, San Juan and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Soto has exhibited extensively, including at The Arts Club of Chicago, Hyde Park Art Center and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, all Chicago; Abrons Art Center, El Museo del Barrio and Whitney Museum of American Art, all New York, NY; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; and Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA. Her work is held in collections including the Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL; and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico and Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, both San Juan. Soto received awards from the Bemis Center and a College Arts Association Public Art Dialogue Funders Award, among others. She has received fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, Joan Mitchell Foundation and US LatinX Art Forum. Soto is co-director of the outdoor project space The Franklin in Chicago. She is represented by Luis de Jesus Los Angeles.

Hester Stinnett (b. 1956; l. Philadelphia, PA) holds a BFA from the Hartford Art School, University of Hartford, CT and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University, Philadelphia. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is held in numerous private and public collections, including the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Rhode Island Museum of Art, Providence; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. In 2004, she was awarded a Pennsylvania Council Artist Fellowship. Stinnett was an artist-in-residence at the Fabric Workshop in 2003 and co-authored Water-based Inks: A Screenprinting Manual for Studio and Classroom (1987) with Lois M. Johnson. She is professor emerita of printmaking at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, where she taught for 40 years.

Nazanin Noroozi extends her gratitude to the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York, NY, for their support of her creation of the artwork on view. Will Harris is pleased to recognize the Independence Foundation, Philadelphia, PA, for their generous support of his work. The Print Center is grateful for the cooperation of Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Cristin Tierney Gallery and Company Gallery, both New York, NY.