To Care Is To Plant A Seed

Nilou Kazemzadeh is an Iranian-American artist based in Maryland. She holds a B.A. in Studio Art (‘16) and an MA in Curriculum and Instruction (‘17) from the University of Maryland, College Park, as well as an MFA from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture. In her interdisciplinary practice, Kazemzadeh creates works that embody a deeply personal connection to place and lineage— acts of quiet revolt against isolating and harmful systems of power driven by politically motivated, self-serving agendas. Her work is anchored in care: a space held by the memories of family, heritage, and the earth. These domains, each intricate and sacred, interweave to form an environment of joy, a space where tenderness becomes an act of resistance.
To Care Is To Plant A Seed is a stained glass panel that encapsulates an intimate image from the Kazemzadeh’s family archive: her mother and aunt’s hands offering a piece of pomegranate to her older brother, then a baby, in Iran. This central moment is encased in three surrounding layers of glass that form a house-like motif: offering protection, reverence, and permanence to an otherwise fleeting act of tenderness.
Rooted in personal archive, locality, and understandings of home, the work resonates closely with Edgar Reyes’s Cariño (2021). Cariño features a Polaroid of a young Reyes with his mother, accompanied by a handwritten dedication to his grandmother. Like Reyes’s work, To Care Is To Plant A Seed offers a tender meditation on heritage and care, transforming personal history into a corresponding visual language.

CAPP Committee Selection 2024 - 2025
Tenth Cycle

Nilou Kazemzadeh

2023