SaveArtSpace is proud to present wait until my sugar melts, a public art exhibition on billboard ad space in New York, NY, opening April 10, 2026, curated by Sophie Barfod.

With advertising being a $200 billion-a-year industry, we are exposed to over 3,000 ads a day. Advertisements sell more than just products; they sell our aspirations, playing into who we desire to be, and how we visualize concepts of worthiness and normalcy. In other words, advertising tells us who we are and who we should want to be. Women learn from a very early age that their sexualized behavior and appearance are rewarded by society. This supposed right to remain sexy is often marketed as empowerment, but is essentially a repackaging of the expectation for women to remain objects. 

The intricate drawings of intimate lingerie, central to Azita Moradkhani’s practice, explore how such social norms and external conflicts settle beneath our skin. Moradkhani was born in Tehran, where exposure to Persian culture, and Iranian politics shaped her practice to expose the dynamics of vulnerability and violence. Blind Spot (2023) illustrates this dynamic by juxtaposing delicate lace with a screaming face, transforming the garment's soft domestic register into a charged aesthetic. Lace in Moradkhani’s work hints at the cultural framework that imposes restraints on erotic feminine spaces. At the same time, the red represents the marks of bodily harm that reveal the costs of those imposed structures. Here, the female body becomes an archive for internal experiences. 

Blind Spot functions as a documentary gesture toward the targeted shooting of protesters in the eyes during the Women, Life, Freedom movement in Iran in 2022, literalizing the violent consequences of female noncompliance. By presenting the work in a space traditionally dominated by advertising, the imagery directly confronts the visual language that constructs idealized femininity, subverting the commercial narratives of female desirability through sexualisation.

Blind Spot (2023) by Azita Moradkhani is presented as part of the exhibition wait until my sugar melts, curated by Sophie Barfod. The exhibition is hosted by the School of Visual Arts, with the public art component presented in collaboration with SaveArtSpace and Jane Lombard Gallery.

Opening April 10, 2026 SaveArtSpace will launch a public art installation for the selected artwork on billboard ad spaces in New York, NY. The public art will be on view for at least four weeks.

Selected Artist

Location: 11th Ave & 49th St, New York, NY

Azita Moradkhani was born in Tehran where she was exposed to Persian art and culture, as well as Iranian politics, and that double exposure increased her sensitivity to the dynamics of vulnerability and violence that she now explores in her art-making. She received her BFA from Tehran University of Art (2009), and both her MA in Art Education (2013) and her MFA in drawing, painting and sculpture (2015) from Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University. 

Moradkhani's work in drawing and sculpture has focused on the female body and its vulnerability to different social norms. It examines the experience of finding oneself insecure in one’s own body. In her drawings, the incorporation of unexpected images within intimate apparel intends to bring humor, surprise, and a shock of recognition. Layers of hazy images reveal stories, with the hope of leaving a mark on the audience. Two worlds–birthplace and adopted home–live alongside each other in her work, joining intimately at a single point. 

Moradkhani’s colored pencil drawings of intimate lingerie, negligees, and corsets explore interconnected narratives of pain and pleasure through abstract patterns and images based on photojournalism, art photography, and historical symbolism. She uses eroticism to seduce the viewer, who finds, upon closer inspection, through the layers of colored pencil, past the details of lace and filigree, disruptive iconography narrating inherited histories of nation and belief. 

In her sculptural work, through the collaborative process of casting her body, she places herself in a vulnerable situation that challenges beliefs she grew up with. She again mixes imagery—tattoos of memory and history—to emphasize both inter- and dis-connections between sexual representation and national identity, between the public and the private. 

She has been the recipient of multiple awards, including the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts Traveling Fellowship (2025); NYFA City Artist Corps Grants (2021); the Young Masters Art Prize (London); the Young Masters Emerging Woman Art Prize (London); and the Saint Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artists Grant (2017). The Financial Times (London) reviewed her series of drawings Victorious Secrets, and the Boston Globe (MA) published reviews of her collaborative performance piece Irezumi, and her curated exhibition Echo over the past few years.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally many times, including at the Royal Academy of Arts (London, UK), Newport Art Museum (RI, USA), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Yinchuan, China). She has also been a visiting artist/lecturer at universities such as Davidson College (NC), Lesley University (MA), and the Parsons School of Design (NY), as well as a panelist at Harvard University, Southern New Hampshire University, and MIT. She is currently teaching at Parsons School of Design (NY) and Rhode Island School of Design (RI). She has been granted numerous residencies, including Yaddo, Virginia Center For the Creative Arts (VCCA), the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), Silver Art Projects, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), and International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP).

Connect With Azita at @azita.mora.

Curator

Sophie Barfod is an independent curator, art advisor and writer from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, currently based in New York City. Her practice operates at the intersection of curatorial work and cultural strategy, with a focus on exhibitions in found and public spaces grounded in feminist theory and social practice.

Connect with Sophie at @sophiebarfod.

SaveArtSpace

Founded in 2015, SaveArtSpace is a non-profit organization that works to create an urban gallery experience, launching exhibitions that address intersectional themes and foster a message of social change that benefits the working class. By placing culture over commercialism, SaveArtSpace aims to empower artists from all walks of life and inspire a new generation of young creatives and activists.